Open Access Surgery (Mar 2022)
Rate and Risk of Follicular Carcinoma in Patients with a Cytologic Diagnosis of Follicular Neoplasia: Experience from Tertiary Hospital in Ethiopia
Abstract
Berhanetsehay Teklewold, Berhanu Mekuria, Wuletaw Chanie St Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Department of Surgery, Addis Ababa, EthiopiaCorrespondence: Berhanetsehay Teklewold, St Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Department of surgery, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Email [email protected]: Differentiating benign from malignant thyroid nodules is not possible clinically. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and risk of malignancy postoperatively among patients who had a cytologic diagnosis of follicular neoplasia preoperatively.Methods: All patients who were operated on with histopathologic diagnosis of follicular neoplasia from January 2015 to December 2019, at St Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia were studied retrospectively. Operation theatre log books and individual patient charts were reviewed for the study variables. Both patient and nodular characteristics were analyzed for risk of malignancy and an odds ratio was used to identify the association of factors for follicular carcinoma.Results: A total of 110 patients’ charts were retrieved for analysis. Two-thirds of patients (78; 70.9%) had benign findings postoperatively and only 32 (29%) patients had malignancy consisting of 21 (19.1%) follicular carcinoma and 11 (10%) papillary carcinoma. The mean age of patients with malignant and benign histopathology is 48.3 (42.9– 53.7) and 41.7 (38.7– 44.7) respectively (p < 0.05). Only tumor size, consistency of nodules, and presence of associated symptoms of malignancy were identified as important predictors upon stepwise logistic regression. The odds of cancer for nodules greater than 4 cm is 4 times higher than the odds for smaller nodules.Conclusion: In our finding, the prevalence of follicular carcinoma in patients with a cytologic diagnosis of follicular neoplasia is comparable to those reported in other pieces of literature. Clinical characteristics such as size of tumor, consistency of the nodule, and presence of associated symptoms of malignancy are still important predictors of malignancy.Keywords: rate, risk, follicular carcinoma, follicular neoplasia, Ethiopia
