VARIANTS OF PAPILLARY CARCINOMA OF THE THYROID - EXPERIENCE AT ASIR-CENTRAL-HOSPITAL

Papillary carcinoma of the thyroid is now further subclassifiable into its different variants. We report incidence, clinical behaviour and o utcome of rare variants of papillary thyroid cancers at Asir Central H ospital, Saudi Arabia. These variants differ from each other not only on a morphometric basis, but also in clinical behaviour. Accordingly, we report our experience of different variants in a series of 35 papil lary carcinomas. These cases were received in the surgical pathology l aboratory of Asir Central Hospital from January 1987 to December 1994. We have reviewed clinical charts, microscopic slides and pathological reports of these carcinomas. The following results have been obtained : 20 cases were classical (usual) papillary thyroid carcinomas; seven were follicular variants; three were tall cell/columnar variants; two were oxyphilic variants; and one was a diffuse sclerosing variant. The re were two de-differentiated papillary carcinomas (anaplastic carcino mas with foci of well-differentiated papillary carcinomas). These vari ants were also correlated with clinical parameters such as age, sex an d nationality of the patients, aggressiveness of the tumours, types of surgery required, and follow-up when available.