Childhood thyroid carcinoma

N A SERIES of publications during the past I decade, we have recorded our efforts to c d lect and evaluate data on all known cases of thyroid carcinoma occurring in patients less than 15 years of age.51-54 Our last publication52 listed 167 additional reported cases, but we later found some that had been overlooked. During the past 5 years, 148 new cases have been reported. Many of these were single case reports, and others were listed together with case reports for adults in large series. A few may have been overlooked, but, so far as we have been able to determine, there have been 315 cases of childhood thyroid carcinoma published in the world literature. Table 1 lists the cases reported since our last review of the literature. We have made a sustained effort during the past 12 years to discover as many unpublished cases as possible. Questionnaires were sent to all children's hospitals and all the larger hospitals in the United States and Canada. Personal surveys have been carried out by the authors throughout parts of the United States, Canada, Western Europe, the Middle East, and Central America. Surveys of the Philippine Islands, Japan, and Formosa were recently conducted for us. We realize that many other cases have occurred, but, to date, we have located 247 unpublished cases. Together with the 315 published cases, the total of known cases of childhood thyroid carcinoma is 562. Not all of the reported and submitted cases could be accepted as being of thyroid cancer. In several instances, there were