| Summary: | Objective: Approximately 7% of people have thyroid nodules. The most important consideration in evaluating patients with thyroid nodules is whether the nodule is malignant. Fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy is the best, safest, and most cost-effective measure for distinguishing malignancy, thus preventing unnecessary surgeries. In this survey, adequacy of smears, cytologic findings, histologic findings, and their concordance, have been studied. Materials and Methods: FNA biopsy was performed in 200 patients with palpable thyroid nodules in 2004-2005. Cytologic findings and adequacy of specimens were recorded. Of the 200 patients, 39 had surgery; postoperative histological results were compared with FNA biopsy results.Results: Of FNA smears, 88% were adequate; of these adequate smears, 57.2% were benign, 34.2% were suspicious for malignancy, and 8.6% were reported as malignant. When results of surgical pathology were compared with FNA cytology results, all benign surgical specimens also had benign cytology results, and all malignant surgical specimens had malignant results on cytology evaluation. In nodules with suspicious cytology, histopathology showed that 50% were malignant and 50% were benign.Conclusions: FNA is a simple and cost-effective procedure for identifying benign and malignant nodules. The incidence of malignant pathology in nodules with suspicious cytology was higher than other studies.Turk Jem 2008; 12: 73-4
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