갑상선 결핵

Thyroid Tuberculosis

Objectives: Despite of high prevalence of tuberculosis in Korea, thyroid tuberculosis is very rare and only a few records are available. This study was carried out to evaluate the clinicopathologic characteristics of thyroid tuberculosis and to find out optimal therapeutic strategies for these lesions. Materials & Methods: From Jan. 1986 to July. 2000, of 5,493 patients who were underwent thyroidectomy, only 8(0.14%) had discovered to have thyroid tuberculosis. The medical records of them were analyzed retrospectively. Results: There were one man and seven women with a mean age of 40.3 years. Only one had tuberculosis sequalae on chest X-ray and two had past history of tuberculous lymphadenitis. However, none of them had symptomatic pulmonary tuberculosis. Most frequent symptom was palpable neck mass. The preoperative U/S, CT and FNAB failed to diagnose thyroid tuberculosis. The pathologic reports were chronic granulomatous thyroiditis with caseous necrosis in all the cases and AFB stain was positve in 5 cases. All cases were successfully treated by surgical resection and anti-Tbc. medications. Conclusions: The incidence of thyroid tuberculosis was extremely low and most of them have been presented as a palpable neck mass especially in relatively young-aged female patients. Although any diagnosis for thyroid tuberculosis prior to microscopical study of tissue removed at operation was not yielded, the preoperative diagnostic workups will be available with experience. Surgical resection and anti- Tbc medication would be the choice in the management of thyroid tuberculosis.