Fifty patients with occult papillary carcionoma of thyroid(OPC) who under went thyroidectomy at the department of surgery, Seoul National University Hospital between January, 1982 and December, 1992 were clinically analyzed and the follow-up
study
was
performed for the patients. The patients were divided into two groups, one included the patients who were found to have OPC on thyroidectomy for diseases other than OPC(Group 1), the other, the patients who were found to have OPC on the
histologic
examination of the palpable neck nodes without having abnormal findings of the thyroid before thyroidectomy(Group 2). Clinical and pathologic findings of OPC were compared with those of 385 ordinary papillary carcinomas of the same period.
The mean follow-up period was 64 months(from 6 through 138 months). The prevalence of OPC was 11.5% of all the papillary carcinoma. Female to male ratio was 11.5 : 1 and the mean age 41.1 years.
For the group 1 cases, thyroidectomies were not performed for OPC but for the diseases associated with OPC and lymph node dissections were performred only of the cases with lymph node enlargement. For the group 2 cases, thyroidectomies and lymph
node
dissections were performed simultaneously. There was one node recurrence in group 2 cases and no mortality in both groups during the follow-up period.
The disease most frequently associated with OPCF was adenomatous goiter and there were 15 cases who did not have other thyroid diseases.
There was no significant difference between the lymph node metastasis and the size of the primary lesion(p>0.05). The size of the tumor was closely related to the tumor extent(p<0.05).
There were no significant differences between ordinary papillary carcinoma and OPC in age, sex and lymph node involvement. Extrathyroidal invasion in OPC was significantly lower than ordinary papillary carcinoma(p<0.05).
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