Thyroid Ultrasound: State of the Art Part 1 – Thyroid Ultrasound reporting and Diffuse Thyroid Diseases

Abstract

Accurate differentiation of focal thyroid nodules (FTL) and thyroid abnormalities is pivotal for proper diagnostic and therapeutic work-up. In these two part articles, the role of ultrasound techniques in the characterization of FTL and evaluation of diffuse thyroid diseases is described to expand on the recently published World Federation in Ultrasound and Medicine (WFUMB) thyroid elastography guidelines and review how this guideline fits into a complete thyroid ultrasound exam.

Current Knowledge in Ultrasound-Based Liver Elastography of Pediatric Patients

“…The summary sensitivity was 81% (95% CI: 71-88) and the specificity was 91% (95% CI: [83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96] for the prediction of significant liver fibrosis. Subgroup analysis revealed that 2D-SWE had an excellent diagnostic performance according to each degree of liver fibrosis.…”

“…Real-time elastography (RTE) has been used mainly for the evaluation of the pancreas [83][84][85][86], the thyroid [87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94], the prostate [95], the breast [5,96] but also for the liver [1,2,7,97]. Published evidence in children is scarce and contradictory [98][99][100].…”

Thyroid Ultrasound: State of the Art. Part 2 – Focal Thyroid Lesions

“…This chapter in the two part series describes the utility of ultrasound and new techniques in ultrasound like elastography and ultrasound contrast in evaluation of thyroid nodules, lymph nodal disease and parathyroid lesions [103][104]. …”

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“…Practitioners need to be competent in the intravenous administration of contrast agents, be familiar with contraindications and be able to manage any possible adverse effects within the medical and legal framework of their country [4,38]. We refer to the educational activities of the collaborating societies of this paper, the World Federation of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (WFUMB) [9,23,[93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102], the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB) [1,3,4,11,37,38,49,50,74,79,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119] and the CEUS LI-RADS Working Group for Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS®) [34][35][36][120]…”