thyroid papillary microcarcinoma: etiology, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, follow-up, histopathology and prognosis

background: thyroid carcinoma is the most common malignancy of the endocrine system. papillary thyroid carcinoma (ptc) is the most common type of thyroid cancer, accounting for 70–90% of well-differentiated thyroid malignancies. thyroid papillary microcarcinoma is a subtype of papillary carcinoma that included tumors with less than 10mm diameter. as a result of diagnostic methods improvement, prevalence of this tumor is increasing. in this study we reviewed different characteristics of tumor. methods: we searched various factors about this tumor in different databases (pubmed, ovid, google scholar, iran medex and sid databases,july 2012 till august 2013), after that the articles were classified. data of each article were extracted and sorted in tables.data of each factor in different articles were summarized. results:etiology, clinical presentation, prognosis, histopathology, follow-up, diagnosis and also age, gender, tumor size and treatment were factors about this tumor described in details here. conclusion: awareness and better understanding of the characteristics of this tumor and manage it as an individual and valuable tumor can take an effective step in promoting public health practice.