!Purpose: The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs) and follicular thyroid carcinomas (FTCs) appear with different ultrasound characteristics. Material and Methods: 90 patients (70 females, 20 males) were included in the study in whom after thyroidectomy the diagnoses of PTCs or FTCs were established.
Background: Epidemiologic data revealed an increasing incidence of papillary carcinomas (PTCs) in the German population. There is some evidence that the size of resected PTCs has decreased during the last few years.
Purpose:The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that the sonographic characteristics of PTCs vary with size.Material/Methods: Consecutive PTCs were histologically confirmed in 41 patients. Ultrasound examinations of these 50 PTCs were reevaluated retrospectively and classified according to five sonographic criteria.Results: It could be shown that the sonographic shape (p < 0.001), the contour (p = 0.024), the structure (p = 0.04), the echogenicity (p < 0.001) and calcifications (p = 0.008) varied with the size of the neoplasms. By factoranalysis a factor F PTC with an eigenvalue of 1.89 could be extracted from the data on which the sonographic structure, the ontour and the presence of calcifications had the strongest impact with factorloadings of 0.74, 0.68 and 0.61, respectively.
Conclusion:The knowledge of the variation of the ultrasound characteristics should be of assistance for the sonographic classification of PTCs. In this context microcarcinomas usually do not display cystic components. However, they may show microcalcifications. Cystic components, hyperechogenicity and the taller-than-wide sign are predominantly seen in larger PTCs.
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