Cytopathologic patterns of thyroid gland mass in jimma university specialized hospital, jimma, southwest Ethiopia: a two years retrospective cross-sectional study.

Abstract

Thyroid gland is one of the largest endocrine organs, with a remarkable potential for growth and enlargement. Thyroid diseases are among the most common endocrine disorders in humans. Prevalence and incidence of thyroid diseases are not well studied in Ethiopia and other African countries; Characterizing type of the lesions in a given setup has paramount importance to design effective strategy. Hence, the purpose of this study is to determine the frequency of various cytological thyroid lesions among patients in Jimma University Specialized Hospital (JUSH). Objective: This study aimed to determine cytopathologic patterns of thyroid gland mass on Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) in JUSH. Methods: A retrospective descriptive study was applied on patients with thyroid gland mass diagnosed at JUSH pathology department with from 1st September, 2018 to 30th August, 2019. Data was collected using structured check lists from the patients FNAC report record manually by trained cytopathology technicians working in the department. Data was entered into Epi data v.3.1. cleared and exported to SPSS V.20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and median were used for analysis the results in tables and figures. Results: A total of 1841 cases were undergone thyroid FNAC from 1 st September 2018 to 30th August 2019 in the pathology department. Majority of these (83.2%) were females; and 310(16.8%) were males. The highest prevalence (30.3%) of thyroid swelling cases has been occurred in the age group of 21-30 years. The most common thyroid lesion found by FNAC is colloid goiter 1603 (87.1%). A total of 40(2.1%) cases are found to be malignant and the most common type is papillary carcinoma accounting 20 (50%) followed by anaplastic carcinoma 16(40%). Although thyroid swelling was common in and around Jimma, the prevalence of thyroid cancer was quite low. Conclusion: Benign lesions were the predominant thyroid lesion; of which the proportion of colloid goiter was higher compared to another subtype of benign thyroid lesions. Malignant thyroid lesions had also contributed. Future research with histological technique, detail socio-demographic information, and clinical feature is crucial to determine the patterns of thyroid lesions and associated factors.