Comparison of three prognostic indexes in differentiated thyroid cancer.

We investigated epidemiological data and correlation coefficient among three prognostic indexes (TNM, AGES and DeGroot's) in 82 patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (mean age: 41.7 +/- 16.6 years and sex ratio F8:M1). Seventy eight cases (95.1%) had papillary and 4 (4.8%) follicular carcinoma. Surgical complications were: vocal cord paralysis 7 cases (8.4%), hypoparathyroidism 10 cases (12.2%) and both in four cases (4.8%). We did not find surgical complications in patients subjected to main limited procedures. After a follow up of 54.5 +/- 44.5 months one patient was dead due to thyroid cancer (1.2%) and 2 patients had tumor relapse (2.4%). We found positive correlation between TNM and AGES, AGES and DeGroot and DeGroot's and TNM indexes, with concordance between them (k = 0.2281, p = 0.001). In our series, follicular cancer prevalence is lower than literature reports. Our results suggest that TNM, DeGroot's and AGES indexes may have similar prognostic value in differentiated thyroid cancer.