[Prognostic factors of papillary carcinomas of the thyroid gland--retrospective multivariate analysis of 227 patients with median follow-up 130 months].

I carried out the retrospective analysis of the prognostic factors of papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland by using Cox's proportional hazard model using SAS program, and obtained the following conclusions. Two hundred and twenty seven patients who received surgical treatment under the diagnosis of carcinoma of the thyroid in the 1st Department Surgery of Yokohama City University during 24 years from 1964 to 1987 were subjected to this study. As prognostic factors, sex, age at the diagnosis, size of the tumor, presence of lymph node metastasis, number of the metastatic lymph nodes, presence of the local infiltration, presence of the distant metastasis and thyroidectomy were investigated. From these results, age at the diagnosis (chi 2 = 18.93, p < 0.0001, beta = 0.06, risk ratio = 0.203), presence of the local infiltration (chi 2 = 14.55, p < 0.0001, beta = 0.75, risk ratio = 0.175) and sex (chi 2 = 7.63, p < 0.01, beta = -0.91, risk ratio = 0.175) were considered statistically significant. Patients over 50 years of age at the diagnosis and presence of the local infiltration had high risk of death from papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland. Particularly, age at the diagnosis was the most important prognostic factor. Therefore, it was considered that therapeutic approach taking age into consideration is important for the treatment of papillary carcinoma of the thyroid.