Evaluation of Thyroid Functions After Radiotherapy in Primary Head and Neck Malignancies without Surgery

Aim: In this study, it was aimed to investigate thyroid dysfunction in patients who underwent radiotherapy due to primary head and neck malignancy. Material and Methods: The study was carried out between January 1, 2008 and January 31, 2017 at Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University Health Practice and Research Hospital with patients who received radiotherapy due to primary malignancy of the head and neck region and did not undergo surgery. The data were recorded retrospectively from hospital records. All analyses were performed on SPSS v21 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Two-tailed p-values of less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The results of a total of 132 cancer patients were examined. Cancers examined mostly consisted of 52.28% (n = 69) glottic / supraglottic larynx cancer, 15.15% (n = 20) nasopharynx cancer, and 6.06% (n = 8) hodgkin lymphoma patients. In addition to ;78.8% (n = 104) of the patients were male and the median age was 60.5 (min = 15, max = 84) years. Median duration of treatment was 44 (min = 8, max = 354) days. It was determined that 28.8% (n = 38) of the patients had abnormal TSH value. Hypothyroidism developed in 15.9% (n = 21) of the individuals and hyperthyroidism developed in 12.9% (n = 17). And 29.0% (n = 11) of the TSH abnormalities determined in the preradiotherapy period and 71.0% in the post-radiotherapy period. There was no significant difference in age and gender between the normal TSH group and those that had abnormal TSH after radiotherapy; however, the age of patients with abnormal TSH value before radiotherapy was significantly higher (p