Objective: To investigate the clinical characteristics of patients with different gender who diagnosed as differentiated thyroid cancers (DTC).
Methods: A cohort of patients with DTC underwent surgery in Chinese PLA General Hospital from October 2001 to may 2011 was retrospectively studied.
Results: (1) A total of 1 756 patients with DTC were enrolled in the study and a marked female preponderance was found with the female/male ratio of 2.32: 1. The peak incidence was 35-45 years old in both genders.Higher prevalence of DTC was observed in the male patients with a single nodule than in the males with multinodulars (36.42% vs 28.90%, P < 0.01), while no statistical difference was found in the female patients (33.60% vs 31.77%, P > 0.05). (2) Ultrasound examination revealed that, the female DTC patients with microcalcification thyroid nodules were more than the male patients (69.26% vs 62.62%, P < 0.05), while less in female patients with undefined boundary thyroid nodules (57.79% vs 72.01%, P < 0.01). The tumor size was shown to be smaller in the women than in the men [(1.6 ± 1.3) cm vs (1.8 ± 1.5) cm, P < 0.01]. (3) Higher rates of III/IV TNM Stage, lymph node metastasis and extrathyroidal invasion were found in the men than in the women (21.74% vs 14.51%, P < 0.01, 33.27% vs 23.80%, P < 0.01 and 10.59% vs 7.17%, P < 0.01).
Conclusion: There is significant gender-related difference of clinical characteristics in the patients with DTC.