The Biological Malignancy of Tracheally Invading Thyroid Carcinoma

Abstract

The majority of differentiated thyroid carcinomas have high post-operative survival rate. However, some cases have biological malignancy which invades the trachea. Five patients with tracheally invading thyroid carcinoma were treated over the past three years at our hospital. Of these patients, tracheoplasty was performed in three of them and they survived for six to twenty-two months. In the other two cases, only thyroidectomy were performed. Those cases survived for five and six months after their operations. Both died of hemoptysis. We measured the nuclear DNA contents in these five patients and cases without tracheal invasion (ten papillary and four follicular carcinomas). The histogram of the normal thyroid gland showed diploidy. That of the control group showed aneuploid but a nearly diploid pattern. The pattern of all tracheally invading cases showed polyploidy. So tracheally invading thyroid carcinoma have "biological malignancy".