Morphological Diversity of Pretibial Myxedema and Its Mechanism of Evolving Process and Outcome: A Retrospective Study of 216 Cases

Table 1

Demographic and dysthyroid-associating characteristics of 6 variants when diagnosed at our department.

Variables	Total	Nodule	Plaque	Diffuse swelling	Mixture	Tumor	Elephantiasis	Statistical test	value
Patient number	216	45	33	96	17	10	15
Sex
Female (number)	120	17	18	62	12	4	7	= 11.958	0.035
Male (number)	96	28	15	34	5	6	8
Age
year	46.7 ± 12.2	42.8 ± 9.6	46.3 ± 14.4	48.2 ± 12.3	46.7 ± 10.1	39.8 ± 10.0	53.6 ± 12.9	= 2.956	0.013
Range (min–max) year	17–80	21–65	17–80	21–80	25–60	18–50	26–79
Occupation
Chinese farmer	144	27	17	68	14	10	8	= 31.955	0.044
City dweller	57	13	11	26	2		5
Worker	10	2	4	1	1		2
Cadre	4	3		1
Teacher	1		1
Dysthyroid-associated
Graves	215	45	33	96	16	10	15	= 11.76	0.038
Hashimoto thyroiditis	1				1
Exophthalmos	206	35	31	89	12	9	14	= 1.503	0.913
Acropachy	28	7	10	14	3	3	5	= 13.413	0.02
Temporal relationship between PTM onset and dysthyroid diagnosis
Before dysthyroid	4	3					1	= 20.184	0.028
Simultaneous	30	9	6	11			4
After dysthyroid	182	33	27	85	17	10	10
Dysthyroid course
month	50.4 ± 45.1	41.4 ± 42.6	45.3 ± 41.8	48.3 ± 41.1	67.4 ± 57.2	66.0 ± 58.3	66.5 ± 51.0	= 1.537	0.18
Range (min–max) month	5–204	6–192	5–180	5–192	7–192	24–204	9–168