Objective: The present study aimed to emphasize the necessity and significance of thyroidectomy by determining the prevalence of incidental thyroid cancer in the cases that underwent surgical intervention for the treatment of benign thyroid disease.

Subjects and Method: Thyroidectomy was performed in 443 cases including those with benign multinodular goitre (BMNG) or toxic adenoma or toxic multinodular goitre. Diagnosis was made based on routine physical examination, laboratory analyses, imaging methods and postoperative histopathological findings of the cases.

Results: The mean age of the cases was 45.5 (19–68) years and 72.5% (n = 321) were female. The most common clinical diagnosis prior to the surgery was BMNG (n = 428, 96.6%). While BMNG was determined to be the most common histopathological diagnosis after thyroidectomy at a rate of 81.7% (n = 362), the rate of thyroid cancer was found to be 14% (n = 81). The prevalence of papillary cancer was 84% (n = 56), whereas it was 4% (n = 4), 1% (n = 1) and 0.0% (n = 0) for medullary, follicular and anaplastic cancers, respectively. Papillary cancer was also the most common type of thyroid cancer between genders. As compared to gender, there was no statistically significant difference in terms of distribution of age among general, benign and malignant types of thyroid cancer (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: It is appropriate to prefer thyroidectomy for the treatment of benign thyroid diseases due to the high prevalence of incidental thyroid cancer after thyroidectomy in such cases.