Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: We aimed to investigate the ultrasound (US) features and malignancy rates of thyroid nodules, below and above 1 centimeter diameter, according to fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) results.

Materials and Methods: Total 157 nodular goiter patients, 60 patients’ nodules were below 1 cm and 97 patients’ nodules were above 1 cm, analyzed retrospectively. The nodules with pure cystic, peripheral calcification and inadequate cytological result were excluded. As a malignancy criterion at US, including hypo echoic pattern, solid structure, micro calcification features of nodule and not having peripheral halo feature of nodule were used. In statistical analyze, P<0.05 was accepted as significant.

Results: The malignancy or suspicions cytology rate was found 5% in nodules with below 1 cm, 17.5% in nodules with above 1 cm (total malignancy or suspicions cytology rate: 12.7%) and statistically it was not observed significant difference (P=0.548). The statistical significant differences was not observed between thyroid nodules below and above one centimeter in terms of the US features of nodules for malignancy or suspicions cytology results.

Conclusion: In this study, we found that the US features of the nodules were not significant for determine to perform FNAB or not. Also, the thyroid nodules between below and above 1 cm of FNAB results were not statistically significant difference. Therefore, in our opinions, FNAB should be performed all thyroid nodules regardless of size and US features for early diagnosis of thyroid malignancy.

Keywords: Thyroid, nodule, ultrasound, fine needle aspiration biopsy, size

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector