BENIGN AND MALIGNANT EPITHELIAL TUMORS OF THE THYROID GLAND

Abstract

MANY OF the controversial aspects of thyroid disease which agitated authors a few years ago have largely become adjusted. With the decrease in the frequency and importance of thyrotoxic goiter, the role of tumors of the thyroid gland is assuming increasing proportions. Because of the almost insuperable difficulties in the histologic differentiation between thyroid hyperplasia and neoplasia on the one hand and between benign and malignant tumors on the other, the whole subject of thyroid gland tumors is extremely confused and chaotic. A complete reevaluation of the entire subject would therefore appear to be in order. The recent literature has stressed the surprisingly high incidence of carcinoma found in nodular goiters removed at operation. Curiously, this same incidence is not reflected in the statistics on patients dying of thyroid carcinoma nor in the numbers of thyroid cancers encountered in large series of unselected postmortem examinations. This disparity is more striking