The thyroid cancer in children and adolescents: about 22 cases

Abstract

Our study of the most representative case series of children and teenagers with thyroid cancer in Morocco (22 cases) aimed to highlight the characteristics of this cancer among children and teenagers and to compare results with those in the international literature. We conducted a retrospective, descriptive study of patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, hospitalized in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Hospital in Casablanca, Morocco, over the period January 1995-March 2015. We collected data about 22 cases that met our inclusion criteria. The average age of our patients was 14 years, sex-ratio was 3.4, most of our patients presented with thyroid nodule associated, in 22.7% of cases, with cervical lymphadenopathy and in 9.1% of cases with signs of compression. All patients underwent total thyroidectomy followed by lymph node dissection in 31.82% of cases. The diagnosis of thyroid cancer was based on anatomo-pathological examination of the surgical specimen which confirmed the diagnosis of papillary carcinoma in 95.4% of cases and of vesicular carcinoma in 4.5% of cases. 100% of cases received I-131 RAI treatment followed by thyroid hormone replacement therapy. Close supervision and regular monitoring enabled the detection of nodal metastasis in 3 patients and of distance metastases in 4 patients. Differentiated thyroid cancer among children and teenagers is rare but aggressive, its treatment is based on surgery associated with iratherapy enabling excellent prognosis.