Demographic and Pathological Characteristics of Thyroid Cancer in Libya

Background: The study evaluates the prevalence and incidence of thyroid cancer in Libya, and describes demographic and clincopathological features.
Patients and Methods: The study was conducted on 64 patients with thyroid carcinoma, admitted to the Misurata hospitals, Libya during the years 2000-2012. The clincopathological features were collected from pathology reports and hospital files of the patients.
Results: The mean age of thyroid cancer patients in Libya was 46 years, which is much higher than in benign lesions (36.5 years). Libyan thyroid cancer prevalence and incidence wasevaluated as 12.4 and 2.9 per 100,000 females, respectively. The histological types of the thyroid cancer in Libyan populations showed that the papillary carcinoma was the predominant type followed by follicular carcinoma. On other hand, the medullary carcinoma was less common than anaplastic carcinoma.
Among Libyan patient the systemic involvement, LN involvement, non-papillary histological type of tumor, and tumor size larger than 4cms were strongly associated with poor survival. Although, the men patients had shorter life span than women did, this survival difference was not statistically significant.
The histological types andhistopathological risk features show similar importance in respect to survival as the data from European thyroid cancer.
Conclusion: In Libya, the thyroid cancer incidence is low andmore common in female than in male.Libyan thyroid cancer is dominantly seen in young adult and displays unfavorable features such as high histological grade and stage, large size, frequent lymph node involvement and systemic metastases.