Breast cancer and family history for breast cancer in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The risk for breast cancer in patients with thyroid cancer has been investigated in previous studies, and has been found to be increased. In this study, we present a retrospective analysis of patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma in respect to breast cancer and family history of breast cancer. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study involving 455 patients who were diagnosed as having differentiated thyroid carcinoma between January 2009 and March 2016. RESULTS: The majority of the patients were female (403, 88.6 %). The mean age at diagnosis was 45.5 ± 12.8 years (range, 10-81 years). We detected that 0.7 % of patients with thyroid cancer had breast cancer and 13.4 % of patients had a family history of breast cancer within 3 generations of the proband. There were no significant differences between family history of breast cancer and sex, age at diagnosis, pathologic types, and radioiodine therapy. CONCLUSION: In the literature, there are many clinical, epidemiologic, and experimental studies that show an association between thyroid cancer and breast cancer. Our study is the first report to show history of breast cancer and family history of breast cancer as 0.7 % and 13.4 % in this particular group of Turkish patients with differentiated thyroid cancer.