Risk of malignancy and diagnostic accuracy of fine-needle aspiration biopsy in thyroid nodules with diameters greater than 4 centimeters

Barcelos, Rafaela N.; Camacho, Cléber P.; Mamone, Maria da Conceição de O. C.; Ikejiri, Elza S.; Vanderlei, Felipe A. B.; Yang, Ji H.; Padovani, Rosália P.; Martins, Leandro A. L.; Biscolla, Rosa Paula M.; Macellaro, Danielle; Lindsey, Susan C.; Maciel, Rui M. B.; Martins, João Roberto M.

ABSTRACT

Objective:

The risk of malignancy and diagnostic accuracy of fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) of thyroid nodules (TN) with diameters ≥ 3-4 cm remains controversial. However, some groups have indicated surgical treatment in these patients regardless of the FNAB results. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the FNAB in systematically resected ≥4 cm TN and if the risk of malignancy is higher in these patients. Subjects and

methods:

We retrospectively evaluated 138 patients (142 nodules) with TN with diameters ≥4 cm who underwent thyroidectomy.

Results:

The FNAB results were nondiagnostic/unsatisfactory (ND/UNS) in 2.1% of the cases and benign in 51.4%. They indicated atypia of undetermined significance/follicular lesion of undetermined significance (AUS/FLUS) in 23.9% of cases, follicular neoplasia/suspicious for a follicular neoplasm (FN/SFN) in 9.2%, suspicion of malignancy (SUS) in 8.5%, and malignant in 4.9%. The histopathological analysis after thyroidectomy revealed a thyroid cancer rate of 100% in the FNABs classified as malignant, 33.3% in SUS cases, 7.7% in FN/SFN, 17.6% in AUS/FLUS, and 4.1% in benign FNABs. None of the ND/UNS FNABs were malignant. The global malignancy diagnosis was 14.8% (n = 21). However, the rate of false negatives for FNAB was low (4.1%).

Conclusion:

We showed that the risk of malignancy in nodules with diameters ≥4 cm was higher compared to the risk of thyroid cancer in TN in general. However, we found a low rate of false-negative cytological results; therefore, our data do not justify the orientation of routine resection for these larger nodules.

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