Assessment of CA 19-9 in Patients' With Thyroid Malignancies

Thyroid cancer is a rare disease that represents approximately 3.8% of all new cancer cases.Incidence of thyroid cancer in north Africa about 2.8% of all new cancer cases with mortality rate about 0.73%.Thyroid malignancies are classified into different groups as follows:Papillary thyroid cancer which is the most common form of thyroid cancer form about 80-90% of all thyroid cancers,Follicular thyroid cancer that forms about 10-15% of all thyroid cancers,Anaplastic thyroid cancer that forms less than 2% of all thyroid cancers,Medullary thyroid cancer that forms about 5-10% and other rare types include thyroid lymphoma, and thyroid sarcoma. Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare disease, and its classic tumor marker is calcitonin. However, recently, very aggressive cases have been reported to also secrete carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), and its role as a marker of worse prognosis has been questioned.