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Received Jul 15, 2017; Accepted Sep 11, 2017
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1. Introduction
The proportion of the elderly people to the younger population has increased by 90% over the last 30 years, and as some authors predict, by the year 2020, the proportion of the people over 65 years will increase from 12.4% to 20% [1]. According to the same source of information, the number of older United States citizens will reach 80 million by 2050. The other authors estimated that if in 2000 in the world there were 600 million people in age of 60 years or more, in 2050 there will be 2 billion [2]. The United State Census Bureau announced that the number of the elderly Americans aged above 65 years increases by 2.8% per year between 2010 and 2030 [1]. What is more, it is estimated that by 2050 the population above 85 years old will comprise 24% of the elderly in the United States and 5% of the total population in the world [3]. Some authors noticed that approximately 50% of all surgical interventions are performed in patients in age of 65 or older [4].
Benign and malignant thyroid nodules occur with increasing frequency in the elderly patients [5, 6]. Mazzaferri [7] assessed that, by the age of 65, about 50% of these patients have ultrasound revealed nodules, and the same observations are described on basis autopsies performed for the general population [8]. Some other studies say that about 90% of women after the age of 60 years demonstrate the thyroid nodules and about 60% of...