Utility of FNAC in diagnosis of thyroid lesions and to correlate histopathological studies

Abstract

The Incidence and prevalence of Thyroid lesion is gradually increasing and has become common among women. Thyroid cancer is most common cancer of endocrine system and occurs in all age groups including children. Fine needle aspiration cytology is the first line diagnostic method of Thyroid nodules and is rapid, cost effective and a minimally invasive procedure. Therefore it is widely accepted and more thyroid cases are diagnosed at an early stage. The aim of this study is to assess the Diagnostic accuracy of FNAC by correlating its results with histopathological findings. FNAC procedure was performed on 50 patients with thyroid swellings under aseptic conditions after taking consent of the patient. The results obtained by FNAC were compared with Histopathological findings. : Out of 50 cases, 47 were female and 3 were male. The age of presentation ranged from 16 to 71 years in our study with the mean age being 43.5. Most of cases were of Nodular goiter (23%) followed by Multi Nodular goiter(21%) followed by Hashimoto thyroiditis (18%). Sensitivity of our study was 73.91% and Specificity of our study was 80.95% and diagnostic accuracy was 75%.: Awareness and understanding of thyroid lesions is of great importance as most of these disorders can be treated medically or by surgical intervention. FNAC, which is simple, minimally invasive and rapid procedure, has low false positive rate for diagnosis of thyroid malignancy at an early stage. It can be used as first line method in assessing the nature of lesion.