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Intraoperative frozen-section analysis for thyroid nodules: a step toward clarity or confusion?
Gerhard F Huber1, Peter Dziegielewski, T Wayne Matthews
1Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Surgery, Calgary Health Region, University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Objectives:
To determine accuracy and intertest agreement of preoperative fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and intraoperative frozen-section analysis (FS) findings in thyroid surgery, and to assess the influence of intraoperative FS findings on decision making and the utility of FS in thyroid surgery.
Design:
Retrospective analysis. The results of preoperative FNAC, intraoperative FS, and final histopathological analyses were taken from the histopathology reports. We calculated intertest agreement using the kappa statistic.
Patients:
Two-hundred fifteen patients who underwent primary thyroid surgery. All patients were treated by the same surgeon (S.J.W.).
Results:
T he sensitivity and specificity of FNAC were 57.4% and 91.7%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of FS were 32.4% and 96.5%, respectively. The intertest agreement was poor (kappa = 0.17). In case of malignant FNAC findings, the FS result did not influence treatment decisions; in case of a malignant FS result on the background of a benign, indeterminate, or nondiagnostic FNAC finding, the FS result influenced treatment decisions in 88% of cases.
Conclusions:
Intraoperative FS did not give additional information in cases where a malignant neoplasm was predicted by the FNAC finding. In this setting, it led to conflicting results and did not contribute to correct decision making.