Thyroid cancer in childhood and adolescence.

Fifteen cases of carcinoma of the thyroid gland in children and adolescents between 5 and 20 years of age were treated at the University of Illinois Research and Educational Hospitals from 1936 to 1956. Twenty years of age was chosen as the maximum in this study, since this is the time when the child has reached maturity and growth has ceased. Winship and Chase (1) compiled 285 cases from the literature up to 1955, but no definite maximum age was stated. Our Pathology Department, in accordance with the classification of Warren et al. (2), reported our series of 15 cases, of which 7 or 46.6 per cent were papillary adenocarcinoma, 5 or 33.3 per cent were adenocarcinoma, and 3 or 20.0 per cent were adenocarcinoma in adenoma (adenoma malignum).