A Prospective Study on Assessing the Reliability of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology in Outcomes of Thyroid Lesions

ABSTRACT

Background: FNAC has been considered as gold standard technique to diagnose various thyroid gland lesions. As Thyroid gland is superficial in location it is easily approachable for direct physical examination, cytological evaluation & histopathological study. The main objective of FNAC of thyroid is to categorize patients who need surgery for neoplastic disorder from those having functional or inflammatory abnormality requiring a clinical follow up & medical treatment. Aims & Objectives: To study cytomorphological features of thyroid enlargement & palpable lesions of thyroid. To correlate cytomorphological features of thyroid lesions with histopathological features wherever possible. Methods: The present study was conducted in Department of Clinical Pathology, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital. Around 150 cases of thyroid lesions were enrolled during the period 3 years (March 2014-February 2017). All relevant clinical profile of these cases was taken from case records. Results: In the present study, a total of 150 cases of thyroid swellings were categorized under TBSRTC. Of which maximum cases were seen of benign  etiology i.e.  colloid goitre  more   commonly affecting middle age group i.e. 31-45yrs with female preponderance. As sensitivity & specificity of FNAC was considered, in benign Sensitivity & specificity was reported to be 96% & 100% respectively. Whereas, in malignant lesions both were found to be 100%. Conclusions: The conclusion drawn from this study implicates FNAC as a useful primary investigative modality for evaluation of palpable thyroid lesions. It also helps in distinguishing lesions based on the clinical management required.