Results
In the ten-year period of our study, a total of 659 patients underwent thyroid resection. The mean age at operation was 49.6 ± 10.3 years, and 76.5% of patients were females. A total of 520 thyroid specimens were reported as benign (78.9%), and 139 (21.1%) as malignant (Table 2) . Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) was the commonest malignancy, reported in 106 patients (76.3%), of which one third (29.2%) were < 1 cm, and were classified as PTC microcarcinomas (PTMC) (Table 2 ). Follicular thyroid cancer (FTC) was diagnosed in 22 patients (15.8%), while medullary (MTC), anaplastic thyroid cancer, and thyroid lymphoma (TL) were collectively diagnosed in under 8% of the patients (Table 2 ). More than 80% of the patients with benign histological diagnoses had benign nodular goitre (N=418), while follicular and Hürthle cell adenomas, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease were histologically diagnosed in 68, 26 and 5 patients respectively (Table 3 ).