Thyroid Tumors in Children

Thyroid disorders affect 3.7% of children in the United States between the ages of 11 and 18 years; the incidence of thyroid nodules is 0.46% to 1.5% (1,2). Postmortem studies and ultrasound evaluation of the thyroid gland demonstrate an incidence of thyroid nodules of up to 50% in adults (2). Ezzat et al. (3) demonstrated that 21% of asymptomatic adults had a palpable thyroid nodule on physical examination and that 67% had abnormal thyroid ultrasound findings. In another study of adults between the ages of 18 and 39 years, postmortem thyroid nodules were present in 13% (4). These studies suggest that the true incidence of thyroid nodules in children might be higher than the incidence found in clinical studies.