Abstract
Thyroid nodules in children are much less common than in adults: a large study in 1975 estimated a 1.8 % prevalence in children by palpation and, more recently, 0.2–5.1 % by ultrasound. Because of their rarity, almost all the reports on thyroid nodules and cancer in pediatrics are retrospective. Conversely, nodule malignancy rate is estimated to be much higher in childhood than in adulthood: up to 25 % of pediatric thyroid nodules are malignant. A recent work on nodules ≥ 1 cm in the two populations statistically confirmed this data, reporting a 22 % cancer prevalence in children and 14 % in adults. Thyroid carcinoma is the commonest endocrine tumor in children: the U.S. National Institute of Health Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Cancer Statistics Review Program reported across 1975–2006 an incidence of 1 per million for 5–9-year-old children, 5 per million in 10–14-year-olds, and 18 per million in 15–19-year-olds.
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Grossi, A., Ubertini, G., Pizzoferro, M. (2017). Endocrinology. In: Garganese, M., D'Errico, G. (eds) Conventional Nuclear Medicine in Pediatrics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43181-9_22
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