Thyroid Adenomas in Children

Abstract

According to the papers thyroid nodules are quite rare in the first two decades of life. However, there are some exceptions, relating to areas with an iodine deficiency or affected by radioactive fallout, where the risk of nodules and carcinomas is increased. Therefore, it is a great challenge for the physician to distinguish between benign and malignant lesions preoperatively, and not only in these areas of greater risk. The authors analyzed current works, which are devoted to diagnostics and treatment of adenomas of thyroid gland in children. This literature review is based on works dedicated to epidemiology, histotypes study, and methods of diagnostics, surgical treatment, prognosis and complications of this pathology. The current tendencies in surgical approaches, intraoperative monitoring of recurrent laryngeal nerve are also discussed. The actuality of this problem is connected with last decade increase of adenomas in structure of thyroid gland nodules, increase of number of patients with multiple adenomas and with polypathias: adenomas with nodular goiter, autoimmune thyroiditis and cancer in children. The difficulties of diagnostic of adenomas are related to the similar clinical symptoms, cytogenetic characteristics of growth of benign and malignant lesions of thyroid gland. Additionally there is no systematic review about thyroid adenomas in children recent years.