Balaji Chowdari, Krishna Prasad Padagala
BACKGROUND Lesions of thyroid are the common finding in the general practice. With the availability of thyroid function tests widely, awareness about thyroid diseases increased in general population, fine needle aspiration cytology became the standard for investigating thyroid lesions along with ultrasound examination and serum thyroid function assays. Fine needle aspiration cytology is cost effective and more specific investigation for palpable thyroid lesions when compared to ultrasound examination. Though ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration is more sensitive, but availability and economic burden makes FNAC a widely used investigation. Our study is retrospective analysis of cytology findings of 148 cases of thyroid lesions who referred to our department between March 2016 to February 2017. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fine needle aspiration of palpable thyroid lesion patients referred from various other departments from March 2016 to February 2017. Alcohol fixed slides were stained with haematoxylin eosin stain and also with PAP stain. RESULTS Our study finds that solitary nodule of thyroid were most common lesions referred for FNAC in our institute. 22.29% of cases were neoplastic lesions and 77.71% were non-neoplastic lesions. 28.57% (n=24) of solitary nodules was diagnosed as neoplastic lesions with 14.2% (n=12) were diagnosed as papillary carcinoma. CONCLUSION Our study emphasised on investigating solitary nodules of thyroid with FNAC leads to identification of malignant and potentially malignant lesions with better predictive value and recommends the FNAC as a mandatory investigating tool to detect early malignancy and potentially malignant lesions.
