Endocrine Abstracts

The value of patient-reported outcomes in treatment efficacy assessment of thyroid disorders is of great importance. Recently, a new tool, Comprehensive Symptom Profile (CSP-ThSF22), has been developed to assess symptoms specific for patients with nontoxic goiters. We aimed to test practicability and sensitivity of CSP-ThSF22 in patients with euthyroid goiter undergoing thyroidectomy. A total of 78 patients with uninodular/multinodular euthyroid goiter were enrolled in this study (mean age 48.0, male/female – 14/64). All the patients underwent thyroidectomy. Patients filled out CSP-ThSF22 before surgery and at different time-points thereafter. CSP-ThSF22 is developed to assess the severity of 22 symptoms specific for patients with euthyroid or hypothyroid goiter. Wilcoxon’s matched pairs test was used to compare symptom severity at different time-points. The prevalence of moderate-to-severe symptoms was studied using χ² test or Fisher’s exact test. Practicability of CSP-ThSF22 was shown: patients needed 5–7 min to answer it; the proportion of missing values was <1.5% for all questions; the questionnaire found high acceptance reflected by no refusals. Usefulness of CSP-ThSF22 to distinguish patients in terms of severity and number of symptoms experienced was demonstrated. The information obtained was used by the surgeons at follow-up. After thyroidectomy, reduction in the vast majority of symptoms was observed. At 3 months after surgery, the severity of 11 out of 22 symptoms decreased significantly (P<0.05). Remarkable decrease in the prevalence of moderate-to-severe symptoms after surgery was shown (P<0.05). CSP-ThSF22 is a sensitive and practical tool to assess symptom profile and severity in patients with nontoxic goiters. Comprehensive symptom monitoring is strongly recommended to clearly determine treatment outcomes in patients with euthyroid goiter undergoing thyroidectomy.

[Note: This abstract, although accepted for the meeting, was not presented there.]