Verification and comparisons of different ultrasound risk-stratification systems in the evaluation of thyroid nodules / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To verify and compare the TI-RADS developed by Kwak et al .( Kwak TI-RADS ) ,2015 American Thyroid Association Management Guidelines for Adult Patients with Thyroid Nodules and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer ( ATA Guideline Classification) ,2017 TI-RADS released by the American College of Radiology (ACR TI-RADS) and TI-RADS developed by Zhou et al .(Zhou TI-RADS) in the evaluation of thyroid nodules . Methods The ultrasound images of 339 thyroid nodules in 273 patients were analyzed by retrospective study . The thyroid nodules were categorized into aforementioned four stratified systems . Based on the pathological findings considered the "gold standard",the receiver operating characteristic( ROC ) curve was created to compare the clinical application value of aforementioned four stratified systems . Results The percentage of nodules that could not be categorized were 1 .2％ ,17 .5％ ,0 and 1 .2％ for the Kwak TI-RADS ,ATA guidelines ,ACR TI-RADS ,and Zhou TI-RADS ,respectively and the area under the ROC curve ( AUC) was 0 .899 ,0 .879 ,0 .876 ,and 0 .918 ,respectively . The sensitivity of Kwak TI-RADS ,ATA guidelines classification ,and ACR TI-RADS were higher than that of Zhou TI-RADS (all P < 0 .05) ,whereas the specificity of Zhou TI-RADS was the highest (all P < 0 .05) . As for the accuracy ,no statistically significant differences were observed between any two of Kwak TI-RADS ,ATA guidelines ,ACR TI-RADS ,and Zhou TI-RADS systems ( all P > 0 .05) . Conclusions Four thyroid risk stratification systems provide effective risk assessment for thyroid nodules ,Zhou TI-RADS has relatively lower sensitivity ,but its specificity and AUC value are the highest among the four evaluated systems . In addition ,ACR TI-RADS can classify the most nodules ,while the number of nodules that can′t be categorized by ATA guideline is maximum .