Carcinoma of the thyroid: differential behaviour in solitary and multinodular tumours.

One hundred and sixty-three cases of thyroid carcinoma were treated between 1979 and 1983. The cancers were classified as solitary nodules or carcinomas in multinodular goitres according to their clinical presentation. Analysis revealed a significantly higher incidence of T0/T1 in the solitary nodular carcinoma group (P less than 0.001) and a lower incidence of metastatic disease (P less than 0.05) compared with multinodular carcinoma. Survival for the T0/T1 subgroup of solitary nodular carcinoma was significantly better compared with the same subgroup of multinodular carcinoma (P less than 0.05).