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Updated: Jan 29, 2026

Substernal Thyroid Biopsy Using Endobronchial Ultrasound-guided Transbronchial Needle Aspiration
Published on: November 10, 2014
Presurgical Screening of Fine Needle Aspirates from Thyroid Nodules for BRAF Mutations: A Prospective Single Center
Ramamoorthy Hemalatha1, Rekha Pai1, Marie T Manipadam1
1Department of Pathology, Christian Medical College, Ida Scudder Road, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Objective:
Analysis of BRAF V600E mutation in thyroid fine needle aspirates (FNA) is an important adjunct to cytology, particularly among FNA placed in the "indeterminate category." However, such a prospective evaluation of FNA obtained from patients with thyroid nodules has been lacking from India.
Material And Methods:
FNA from 277 patients were prospectively evaluated for BRAF mutations by Sanger's sequencing. A subset of 30 samples was also analyzed by pyrosequencing using the PyroMark BRAF mutation kit.
Results:
Overall, 27.2% of FNA samples were positive for mutations including 19 (35.8%) of the 53 histologically confirmed papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), 2 of the 25 follicular variants of PTC, and 1 anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. Only 1 (2.7%) of the 37 samples in the atypia of undetermined significance/follicular lesion of unknown significance category was BRAF positive. The sensitivity of cytology improved marginally from 67.1% to 68.3% when evaluated with BRAF. Further, a comparison of the clinicopathological characteristics of BRAF positive and negative PTCs showed a significant association (P = 0.05) between lymph node metastasis and BRAF positivity.
Conclusion:
BRAF positivity was lower than that reported from East Asia with the test being useful in confirming malignancies among the suspicious of malignancy and malignant categories.
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