Endocrine Abstracts

Thyroid nodules and goitre are a common problem, with a very high prevalence evident from screening studies of the general population. In contrast, thyroid cancer is rare accounting for <1% of all new malignancies diagnosed in England and Wales each year. The challenge to the clinician is therefore to identify, amongst the large number of patients referred because of thyroid enlargement, the small proportion thyroid neoplasia. This differentiation is critical since most wit...

There is no doubt that the use of a syringe and needle has led to an important cost effective strategy for the investigation of thyroid nodules by fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) with cytological examination of the aspirate. A recent European Thyroid Association survey found that 99% of respondents used FNAB (Bennedbaek et al 1999). However, there are limitations of FNAB including false negatives, false positives, inadequate specimens and reporting, accessibility of nodul...