Background:

In Chile, Thyroid cancer (TC) is included in a list of diseases that have a guaranteed access to treatment, endorsed by the Ministry of Health. The care burden of the disease will depend on its incidence.

Aim:

To estimate the incidence of TC in Chilean patients with access to thyroid surgery and describe its histopathological characteristics.

Material and methods:

Analysis of the registry of all thyroidectomies performed at a private oncological clinic in Metropolitan Santiago, between 2016 and 2018. Incidence was estimated the number of persons affiliated to an insurance system managed by the same clinic, separated by age and gender.

Results:

TC adjusted incidence varied from 60.8 cases per 100,000 persons/year in 2016 to 48.7 cases per 100,000 persons/year in 2018. The proportion of microtumors was 34% when the diameter of all foci was considered. Papillary and follicular carcinomas were the pathological diagnoses in 96 and 2% of cases respectively. Twenty-one percent of tumors had extra-thyroidal invasion.

Conclusions:

The TC incidence herein reported is higher than the figure of 7.9 cases per 100,000 persons/year reported by us in 2014. This difference could be due to a true increase in the incidence of TC, following worldwide trends or to differences in the methods used in both studies.