Value of ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy in diagnosing thyroid nodules of TI-RADS 4-6 categories / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the application value of ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy(FNAB) in diagnosing thyroid nodules of TI-RADS 4-6 categories.Methods A retrospective analysis was made on the pathologic data of 494 patients (totally 501 nodules) who underwent TI-RADS ultrasonographic stratification and ultrasound-guided FNAB.168 thyroid nodules of TI-RADS 4-6 categories were selected from 163 patients and classified into three groupsgroup T,TI-RADS 4A categories;group Ⅱ,TI-RADS 4B category; group Ⅲ,TI-RADS 5-6 category(the pathologically confirmed cases in category 6 had been removed).The ultimate pathologic findings were taken as golden standards to calculate the accuracy,sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value of ultrasound-guided FNAB in the three groups.ROC curve was drawn to evaluate the diagnostic value of FNAB.Results The accuracy,sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value of the ultrasound-guided FNAB in the three groups were listed as followsgroup Ⅰ 74.4％,73.3％,75.0％,64.7％;group Ⅱ 83.9％,87.5％,71.4％,91.3％;group Ⅲ 89.3％,91.7 ％,75.0％,95.7 ％ respectively.The positive predictive values of the ultrasound-guided FNAB for group Ⅰ and group Ⅱ was higher than that of conventional TI-RADS classification criteria,so the difference was statistically significant; while the positive predictive values for group Ⅲ was close to the conventional ultrasound TI-RADS classification criteria,the difference was not statistically significant.Conclusions The combination application of TI-RADS classification criteria and FNAB can improve the accuracy of ultrasound diagnosis in group Ⅰ and group Ⅱ,and reduce the puncture rate of group Ⅲ.