Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The incidence of differentiated thyroid cancers is increasing, mainly due to the overdiagnosis of small papillary thyroid cancers (less than 1 cm, previously known as microcarcinomas). There is a broad consensus in reducing the surgery extent and the use of radioiodine treatment in low-risk cases by most recent clinical practice guidelines focusing on thyroid cancer treatment. The adoption in real clinical practice is usually slow. The aim of this study is to estim...

Introduction: Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) has an excellent prognosis. However, DTC frequently metastasizes to cervical lymph nodes (CLN). In case of suspicious ultrasonography findings, the fine-needle aspiration (FNA) is usually required to confirm or exclude metastasis. The combination of FNA-cytology and thyroglobulin (Tg) measurements in the needle washout has been reported to increase the sensitivity of FNA in identifying lymph node metastases from DTC, particular...

Background: The appropriate risk stratification of patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is crucial because most cases have an indolent behavior and need a conservative approach. One of the most widely used tools is included in the American Thyroid Association (ATA) Guidelines, based on heterogeneous literature data derived by different populations, settings, and timeframes. Recent research focused on the inclusion of other features or questioned the clinical relev...

The most frequent mutation in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the p.V600E of the BRAF gene. This mutation leads to the aberrant activation of the RAS / BRAF / MEK / ERK pathway and consequently to the under-regulation of thyroid-specific genes, resulting in uncontrolled growth and de-differentiation of cancer cells. In this work, we analyzed the transcriptomics data produced by the TCGA project using a network approach. The analysis led to the identification of r...

Background: The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a public health emergency and raises the issue of psychological and physical resilience in more vulnerable patients. We investigated the emotional impact of the SARS-CoV-2 spread among cancer patients, followed at our Institution in Italy, after the restrictive measures imposed by the government and the disruption of planned clinical activities.Methods: From March 18th to April 1st, 2020, we...

Objective: Recent papers reported that basal calcitonin (CT) level may be related to thyroid volume. This study aims to evaluate if this finding is confirmed in patients undergoing ultrasonography-guided fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) for thyroid nodules.Design: Retrospective university-center study.Methods: From February 2010 to September 2012, 561 patients underwent ultrasonography-guided FNAC and a complete evaluation in...

Objective: We developed a novel dual-component molecular assay as an ancillary method to improve clinical decision-making in patients with cytologically indeterminate thyroid nodules. The assay includes next-generation sequencing (NGS) based detection of mutations in 23 thyroid cancer related genes and digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) evaluation of the expression levels of a microRNA strongly associated with thyroid cancer. The method was designed as a “rule-out&#...

Background: Deciding whether patients with a cytologically indeterminate thyroid nodule should be referred for surgery or for active surveillance is an important challenge for clinicians. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a novel dual-component molecular assay as an ancillary molecular method for resolving indeterminate thyroid nodule cytology.Methods: We selected 156 thyroid nodules from those that had undergone both FNA cytology ...

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy forced the health system to cancel all non-urgent outpatient activities, to avoid further spreading of the disease inside the healthcare facilities. At our institution, for cancer patients the hospital allowed treatments and consultations: the medical team, however, identified patients whose procedures could be postponed. Even after May 2020, the capacity for non-urgent thyroid surgeries was reduced. These events enhanced our efforts ...

Context: Significant uncertainty exists about the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonographic (US) features used to predict the risk of thyroid cancer in the pediatric population. Moreover, there are not specific indications for thyroid nodule evaluation in patients during the transition age.Objective: The meta-analysis aimed to address the following question: which thyroid nodule US features have the highest accuracy in predicting malignancy in the transiti...