Prevalence and Associated Factors of Thyroid Incidentaloma among Adult People Attending Gondar University Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Incidentally discovered thyroid lesions havebecome highly common in the development and more frequentutilization of highly sensitive imaging modalities, like ultrasound.However, little is known about its prevalence and associated factorsin Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalenceof thyroid incidentalomas and associated factors throughultrasound (US) among adults attending Gondar UniversityHospital.

METHODS: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was carriedout on 290 adults aged 15 years and above. Out of the adults whovisited the hospital during the study, those who neither had historyof thyroid disease, thyroid surgery, nor clinically palpable thyroidnodules were involved in the investigation. The participants wereexamined using a high frequency linear-array transducer (7MHz). For comparing men and women, the unpaired t-test wasused. Binary logistic analysis was used to identify the associatedfactors, and a P-value < 0.05 was considered statisticallysignificant.

RESULT: The frequency of thyroid incidentaloma was found to be33.4% (95% CI: 27.9, 38.9). Thyroid incidentaloma was detected in42.4% of the females and 22.7% of the males (P<0.001). About63% had single and 37% multiple thyroid nodules. About 25.8%had thyroid nodules greater than 1cm. In the multivariable logisticregression analysis, increasing age (AOR=5.96; 2.34, 15.15) andfemale sex (AOR=3.01; 1.73, 5.26) were significantly associatedwith thyroid incidentalomas.

CONCLUSION: The frequency of thyroid incidentaloma (TI) wasfound to be high in this study and much higher among olderwomen. Solitary and small sized thyroid nodules were commonlyseen in the study.