Cytological and Pathological Evaluation of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

Background and objectives:Hashimoto's thyroiditis is one of the most prevalent autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) and the most common cause of acquired hypothyroidism among children and adults. Regarding diagnostic problems and various patterns of autoimmune diseases, this study aimed to investigate the cytology and pathology of Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Materials and methods:The present descriptive study was conducted on patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis referred to the Department of Pathology at Shahid Sadoughi Hospital from 2011 to 2015, whose information recorded in medical archives was extracted and noted in a pre-prepared checklist, including gender, age, thyroid nodule size, clinical findings and radiology findings along with the results of fine needle aspiration (FNA). Subsequently, by extraction of thyroid surgery cases, the cases of surgical specimens were studied and the thyroid nodule size was entered into a checklist based on the involvement of the right lobe or left lobe. Data were analyzed using SPSS v 23 software. Results:This study was performed on 243 patients, of which 32 (13.2%) were males. The mean age was 39.3±11.61 years. The most frequent thyroid nodule size was 1-3 cm (33.7%), the most common clinical symptom was hypothyroidism (17.7%), and the most prevalent pathology was chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis (14%). There was a significant relationship between pathology findings and age (p value 0.049). Conclusion:Findings of radiology, cytology and pathology had no significant relationship with each other, and the gender and age showed no effect on the type of cytology, pathology, and radiology. Only the relationship between pathology and age was significant.