Introduction:

thyroid cancer represents 1% of the total of all kinds of cancer. Its incidence seems to increase 4% every year, and at the present time it is the eighth more frequent cancer in women. Diagnostic means are used to determine what patient undergoes a surgery and the therapeutic strategy to follow.

Objective:

to evaluate the results of the diagnostic means used in patients who undergo a thyroid cancer surgery.

Materials and methods:

a retrospective, descriptive, observational study was carried out including all patients who underwent a surgery of thyroid cancer in the service of General Surgery of the University Hospital ¨Comandante Faustino Perez Hernandez¨ in the period from January 1993 to December 2018. A form was elaborated to collect the information for the study of the database; the results were presented in charts of frequency, numbers and percentages.

Results:

the thyroid cancer was more frequent in the age group of 31 to 50 years; the female sex prevailed; the most frequent variety was the histological papillary one; ultrasound and fine needle cytology yield favourable results to define the biological stock of the thyroid cancers unlike the behaviour of the biopsy by freezing.

Conclusions:

thyroid cancer of the papillary variety is more frequent in relatively young, female patients. Ultrasound and fine needle cytology yield beneficial criteria to define the therapeutic behaviour.

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