Background:

Papillary thyroid carcinoma is the most frequent cause of endocrine cancer. It is an histological variant with the best prognosis, however, sometimes it is a reason for significant diagnostic doubts with other variants of torpid evolution, which makes it difficult for a greater number of patients to benefit from an individualized and conservative treatment.

For this reason, studies are developed in which more and more morphometric and densitometric procedures are added, which allow reducing the subjectivity in the histopathological diagnosis and could represent a tool of great value.

Objective:

To determine the nuclear optical density in papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Method:

A morphometric study of a series of cases was carried out with 12 patients with this histopathological diagnosis, attended at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin University Provincial Hospital. We chose 36 fields and 965 cell nuclei were measured, which constituted the study sample.

Nuclear optical density was determined as a morphometric indicator of papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Results:

The value of nuclear optical density was 1, 14. It is considered low.

Conclusion:

Nuclear optical density of papillary thyroid carcinoma was determined in the studied cases that may contribute to histopathological diagnosis.

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