Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of Thyroid Lesions and its Correlation with Histopathology in a Series of 248 Patients

Abstract

Thyroid swellings are a significant clinical problem in the general population but majority of them are nonneoplastic and do not require surgery. The initial screening procedures include ultrasonography, fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and radionucleotide scan. An initial screening test which will diagnose thyroid lesions accurately will help to avoid surgery in nonneoplastic conditions. The aim of the present study is to correlate the cytology findings with final histopathology. Two hundred and forty-eight cases of thyroid nodules which underwent FNAC followed by surgery were included in this study. The cytology diagnoses were classified into nondiagnostic/unsatisfactory, benign, atypia of undetermined significance/follicular lesion of undetermined significance, follicular neoplasm/suspicious for a follicular neoplasm, suspicious for malignancy and malignant. The fine needle aspiration diagnosis was compared with the histopathology diagnosis. In majority of cases the FNA diagnosis was in concordance with final histopathology. A high incidence of follicular variant of papillary carcinoma thyroid was detected in this study. The awareness of this entity and the search for fine nuclear details of papillary carcinoma can lead to proper identification of this category of tumors and thus help to avoid false negative and equivocal results. Fine needle aspiration cytology is a simple, cost effective, rapid to perform procedure with high degree of accuracy and is recommended as the first line investigation for the diagnosis of thyroid lesions.

Increasing diagnostic effectiveness of thyroid nodule evaluation by implementation of cell block preparation in routine US-FNA analysis

“…The overall accuracy of cyto-cell block for detection of neoplasm was 94%, with a sensibility and specificity of 100% and 90%, respectively. Thyroid nodules are a significant clinical problem in the general population but the majority of them are benign and do not require surgery (15). Indeed, the prevalence of thyroid carcinomas is approximately 4%.…”

Fine needle aspiration cytology of solitary thyroid nodule with histopathology correlation

“…Though only 10-15% of the cysts are neoplastic, FNA from solid area would reduce the misinterpretation and false negativity in cystic neoplasms. [16,17,18] For malignancies, FNAC showed sensitivity of 40%, specificity of 97.1%, positive predictive value of 66.6%, negative predictive value 91.9% and efficacy of 90%. Previous studies on FNAC of solitary thyroid nodule have showed sensitivity and specificity of 68.1% and 100%(Agarwal SK et al), 75% and 100% (Bapat et [6,8,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Akerman et al have quoted that the reasons for low sensitivity could be that tumor being missed at aspiration, misinterpretation of cytologic findings, cellular atypia, indeterminate diagnosis.…”

Retrospective Study of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of Thyroid Lesions According to the Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology in El-Beida City

“…Among these, the FNAC is considered the most accurate diagnostic modality [3]. The Bethesda system of thyroid cytologyreporting makes the reports clinically relevant and helps the clinicians to take appropriate therapeutic interventions [4]. FNAC is a well-established outpatient procedure used in primary diagnosis of thyroid swellings and assumed dominant role in the management mainly to rule out need of surgery [5,6].…”