The Value of Fine-Needle Aspiration Biopsy in Patients With Nodular Thyroid Disease Divided Into Groups of Suspicion of Malignant Neoplasms on Clinical Grounds

Test Performances of Three Diagnostic Procedures in Evaluating Thyroid Nodules: Physical Examination Ultrasonography and Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology.

“…The prevalence of thyroid nodules among the general population is 2.9%-10% in Western countries [6,7] whereas it is 0.8%-1.7% in Japan [8,9]. The frequency of malignancy of all the nodules is 3%-7.6% in Western countries [1,6,[10][11][12]] and 14.2%-24.3% in Japan, including our own series.…”

“…The frequency of malignancy of all the nodules is 3%-7.6% in Western countries [1,6,[10][11][12]] and 14.2%-24.3% in Japan, including our own series. Thus in the iodide-rich area Japan, thyroid nodules are less frequent, but the prevalence of cancer among thyroid nodules is much higher than in Western countries.…”

“…Several authors reported sensitivity from 73% to 98.5% and specificity from 74% to 100% [1][2][3]6]. Because of its high specificity, the introduction of FNA has reduced the number of operations and increased the yield of malignancy at thyroid surgery [11,17].…”

“…The frequency of indeterminate results on FNA ranged from 13% to 30% and the prevalence of malignancy in this category proved to be 10% to 50% [1,3,6,14,15]. As the major causes of an indeterminate result are the difficulty in differentiating follicular adenoma from follicular carcinoma and the relatively high incidence of malignancy in this category, some authors advocate surgical excision of all such lesions [14] or follicular neoplasms on FNA [16,18,19].…”

Multinodular Goiter as the Initial Presentation of Systemic Sarcoidosis: Limitation of Fine-Needle Biopsy

“…11 Although thyroid fine-needle biopsy may aid in early diagnosis and management of thyroid nodular diseases, with an accuracy of 80 -97%, most cases of thyroid sarcoidosis have been diagnosed either postoperatively, or at autopsy, or when other manifestations of sarcoidosis appear. [12][13][14] Ozkan et al reported that less than 1% of patients with cold thyroid nodules had noncaseating granulomas. 5 In our patient, the supine dyspnea quickly resolved after total thyroidectomy, which suggests that multinodular goiter was responsible for her compression respiratory symptoms.…”