Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Recent studies have shown that different ultrasound features of a thyroid nodule are associated with high probability of different types of malignancy. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the sensitivities of each of the identified ultrasound features and to determine their corresponding carcinoma types that they are sensitive to.

Methods: Retrospective data from January 2010 to October 2013 were collected in a regional thyroid unit in the UK. Patients who had a histological diagnosis of thyroid malignancy were included in the study. Their scan reports and histological reports were obtained and analysed.

Results: 100 patients were histologically diagnosed with thyroid malignancy. Five recurrent ultrasound characteristics were identified from the reports of these patients: microcalcification (19%), hypoechogenicity (32%), intranodular-vascularity (34%), irregularity (15%) and halo-like (5%). Their types of malignancy were papillary (63%), follicular (23%), medullary (3%) and Hürthle cell (7%) carcinomas. However, none of the ultrasound features was particularly sensitive to any of the carcinoma types, i.e. papillary and follicular carcinomas had similar sensitivities to individual ultrasound features; medullary and Hurthle cell carcinomas were too few to be considered statistically significant.

Conclusions: We conclude that there is no single ultrasound feature or combination of features having a high sensitivity to individual types of thyroid malignancy.

The limitations of this study are: i) some ultrasound features of the thyroid nodules might have been omitted; ii) some patients did not have ultrasound scan and histology reported; and iii) the sample size restricted the evaluation of all carcinoma types. Further work is required to standardise the implementation and reporting of thyroid ultrasound scan to allow continuous practice evaluation and provision of effective management of thyroid nodules.