European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Solitary thyroid nodule is defined as presence of a palpable nodule in otherwise normal thyroid gland. Imprint cytology is more valuable in differentiating benign and malignant follicular nodules than FNAC. So by doing imprint cytology following hemithyroidectomy definite peroperative diagnosis can be arrived at in most of the cases and appropriate surgical management can be done at the first instance. This study is mainly aimed to compare and correlate between FNAC, Imprint cytology and histopathological examination of solitary nodule thyroid. The present study is a prospective analysis of 50 cases of solitary nodule thyroid, among whom 48 were females and 2 were males. The sensitivity and specificity of FNAC and imprint cytology to diagnose each lesion were compared and from this study it can be inferred that imprint cytology is more sensitive and specific than FNAC to diagnose benign lesions of thyroid like follicular adenoma and colloid goitre. Both FNAC and imprint cytology are easy and cheap and sensitive and specific method to diagnose benign lesions of thyroid but imprint cytology was more sensitive and specific than FNAC to diagnose follicular neoplasms and colloid goitre. The sensitivity and specificity of FNAC and imprint cytology to diagnose malignant lesions has not been arrived at in this study as the number of malignant cases was less (2%) in the present study.