Abstract

AIM: To determine diagnostic utility of fine needle aspiration biopsy for the thyroid cancer screening in patients with nodular goiter. MATERIAL AND METHOD: 179 patients who underwent surgery for nodular goiter by FNAB in our department between 2005-2007 were evaluated retrospectively. Of these cases, thyroid cancer were observed in 22 (12,3%) cases, and, we investigated the thyroid FNAB and its sensitivity, specifity and accuracy by thyroid surgery. FINDINGS: Of these 22 cases, 15(68,2%) patients were diagnosed as thyroid cancer with fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) before surgery and 7(31.8%) patients were diagnosed after examination of surgical excision material. Sensitivity, specifity and accuracy of FNA biopsy were found as 68,2% and 99,4%, 95,5% respectively.False negativity and positivity of FNA biopsy were 4.3% and 6.3% respectively in our study. Five (17,9%) out of 28 patients with solitary thyroid nodule and 16(13,2%) out of 121 patients with multinodular goiter had thyroid cancer. Only one(%20.0) of subjects with toxic multinodular goiter had cancer. None of patients with thyroiditis, hot solitary nodule, and thyroid adenoma had cancer. CONCLUSION: Although sensitivity of FNAB in diagnosis of thyroid cancer was a bit of low (68,2%); The accuracy was as high as 95,5% in our study. Currently, it is a valid tool for the preoperative neoplasia screening of a patient with nodular goiter. Thus, preoperative FNAB enables surgeon to make a radical resection by providing pathological diagnosis before surgery, and also to reduce the number of reoperations.