Diagnostic Procedures during the Follow-up of Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma (dtc)

www.onk.ns.ac.rs/Archive Vol 20, No. 3-4, December 2012 Thyroid carcinoma is the most common endocrine neoplasm. It is a rare disease but the incidence is increasing during the last decades. According to a report from 2010, approximately 37,000 new cases of thyroid cancer are diagnosed in the US every year (1). Better diagnostic imaging procedures, as well as better clinical assessment, contribute to the increasing incidence of thyroid carcinoma. According to the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program (SEER) database for the period of 1988-2005, there was an increased incidence in thyroid cancers across gender, age, and tumor size, without a significant change in its mortality. This significant increase in incidence was mainly the result of better detection of papillary thyroid carcinoma, which is the most frequent histological type of thyroid cancer in the US and Europe (2).