Journal of Thyroid Disorders & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

A Prospective Study of Clinical, Sonological and Pathological Evaluation of Thyroid Nodule

Venkatachalapathy TS, Sreeramulu PN and Ramesh Krishna Maddineni

The diseases of thyroid form a major share of head and neck surgery. Clinical examination although very accurate in most cases, is inadequate in most areas especially in staging of thyroid malignancies and in detecting the multi nodularity of the gland. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the usefulness of clinical examination, FNAC and USG thyroid in the management of thyroid nodule and compare the efficacy of each of the investigation. Thyroid nodules are common in females of age group 31-40 yrs, all our patients presented with swelling in front of neck.

A total of 200 cases of solitary nodule thyroid evaluated from October 2007 to December 2011 At R L Jalappa hospital and research centre, kolar. In our study the sensitivity and specificity of FNAC was 74% and 100% respectively. FNAC helps in planning the correct management and avoids second surgery. The sensitivity and specificity of USG was 73% and 85.3 respectively, hence with use of USG along with FNAC will improve the diagnostic accuracy to higher level. Nodular goiter more in females (m:f 1:2.2). Duration of swelling prior to the presentation was from 6 months to 3 yrs. Incidence of malignancy in SNT is18%. On FNAC majority were benign with nodular goiter being more common. All the lesions suspicious on FNACI (31.3%) proved to be malignant indicating need for surgery. Extent of surgery depends on the nature of lesion and the risk group classification, of that hemithyroidectomy is the commonest. Except transient hypocalcemia no major complications were noticed.