Needle aspiration of thyroid nodule: long-term control of its efficiency in preoperative selection

Eight years extensive use of surgery for detecting thyroid cancer in euthyroid patients with palpable nodule was compared to 8 years preoperative selection by needle aspiration techniques to the same purpose. One thousand one hundred and forty operations were performed from 1972 to 1979; 3079 patients were examined by needle aspiration from 1980 to 1987. The female to male and single to multiple palpable nodule ratios were 5.2, 2.5 in the former and 6.8, 2.7 in the latter group respectively. Postoperative histology showed that nodules were malignant in 35 subjects and benign in 1105 patients of the first group. Two hundred thirty eight patients of the 3079 patients of the second group were operated upon mainly following aspiration findings. Postoperative histology showed primary malignant tumors in 88 patients. Therefore, introduction of needle aspiration techniques reduced the number of operations from 143 per year to 30 per year and increased from 4 to 11 per year the number of malignant nodules detected without any change of the incidence of cancer (about 3% in each group).