This approach may be an oversimplification with the thyroid, however, since

thyroid neoplasms may show many morphologic features of malignancy yet behave
clinically in a benign fashion.
Further, certain thyroid tumors may have iden-

tical gross and microscopic morphology, yet exhibit totally different clinical
progressions. Thus, the most important prognostic feature in thyroid malignancies

is considered by many to be age of onset regardless of pathologic char-

acteristics (41-45).

Accordingly, there is an understandable divergence among pathologists
and clinicians in regard to a uniform classification of these lesions.
Clearly, the term "cancer" is a misnomer, imprecise and often misleading, and
it should be abolished from thyroid nomenclature.
Even designations of benign
vs malignant must be used circumspectly with proper attention applied to clinical vs pathological connotations, since the correlations may be tenuous at
best.

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