Thyroid nodules and Doppler ultrasonography. A new element for an old puzzle?

Whether Doppler ultrasonography (DU) may be of help in characterizing thyroid nodes is still under debate: both good and unsatisfactory results have been claimed, either in evaluating the presence of malignancy or in identifying hyperfunctional structures.

In this paper, the scintigraphic and Doppler patterns of 80 thyroid nodes have been compared, in the hypothesis that there may be some correlation between functional status and vascularity of the node; a small group of cyto-histological information were considered too.

Perilesional flux seems to be, in general, somewhat more frequent than intranodal or mixed patterns: this is, however, true for all the groups of nodular functional conditions studied (peripheric flux was found in 70.2% of hyperfunctioning, 63.6% of isofunctioning and 59.3% of hypofunctioning nodes; intranodular flow was present in 18.9, 9 and 21.8% of hyper-, iso and hypofunctioning nodes respectively; mixed flow was found in 10.8% hyper, 27.2% iso and 18.7% hypofunctioning nodes).

A prevalence of peripheric flow pattern is almost evenly distributed in all class of differently functioning nodes. Our data support the conclusion that no reliable correlations exist between scintigraphic and DU patterns: DU may not, therefore, be considered a valid substitute for nuclear imaging.