English

Abstract

BACKGROUND Thyroid diseases are the most common endocrine disorders throughout the world. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is an autoimmune thyroid disorder and it is the second most common thyroid lesion diagnosed on fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), only after goiter. FNAC is a quick, easy, safe, cost-effective and highly sensitive investigation for diagnosing Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. The cytomorphological grading of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis was 1st done by Bhatia et al. in 1912. The purpose of this study was to grade Hashimoto’s thyroiditis cytomorphologically according to lymphocytic infiltration and correlating it with thyroid hormone profile. METHODS This is a descriptive study of 87 cases which were diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis from January 2019 to December 2019 at the Cytopathology, Department of Pathology, MIMS, Mandya. The slides were collected, reviewed and graded according to Bhatia et al.’s grading system. Thyroid hormone values were collected from the department of biochemistry. The association between cytological grades and thyroid hormone parameters such as T3, T4, TSH and antithyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO) antibody were evaluated. RESULTS In our study, female preponderance was noted. The age range in our study was 10 - 64 years and the majority of cases were in the age group of 21 - 40 years. Grade II was the most common cytological grade, followed by grade III. Based on thyroid function values, majority of the cases were hypothyroid, followed by euthyroid and remaining were hyperthyroid. Anti-TPO levels was raised in 80.6 %, most of them had hypothyroidism. CONCLUSIONS In our study, there was no statistical association between cytological grades and thyroid hormone status. KEYWORDS Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, FNAC, Bhatia et al.’s Grading, Anti-TPO Antibodies, fT3, fT4, Immunoassay Analyzer