Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy and Comparison With Paraffin Section Results: a Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the diagnostic value of intraoperative fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) to determine thyroid cancer in patients with multinodular goiter or solitary nodules/dominant nodules and the results from intraoperative FNAB and paraffin sections were compared in order to determine whether intraoperative FNAB could be an alternative to frozen section analysis. 40 patients were included in the study. During thyroidectomy, intraoperative FNAB was performed and results were classified as malign, benign and suspicious/indeterminate. FNAB and paraffin section results were compared in all patients and evaluated in terms of FNAB sensitivity, specificity, positive/negative predictive values and overall accuracy. Among the 40 patients undergoing thyroidectomy, 7 were identified as thyroid cancer with paraffin section analysis. With intraoperative FNAB, two of the 40 patients were classified as malignant, three had suspicious lesions or ex tremely degenerated cells in which histopathologic evaluation was impossible. Diagnostic analysis of intraoperative FNAB for thyroid cancer revealed 33.33% sensitivity, 100% specificity and 94.59% overall accuracy. The positive and negative predictive values were 100% and 88.57% respectively. Thyroid nodules found to be malignant as a result of FNAB were also found to be malignant in histopathological evaluation. However this was not the case for thyroid nodules found to be benign in FNAB. That is w ith FNAB some malignant nodules may be erroneously classified as benign. Therefore although FNAB has an important role in the management of thyroid nodules it is not sufficient in the detection of malignant cases. © 2022, Yuzuncu Yil Universitesi Tip Fakultesi. All rights reserved.