Thyroid Lesions

There are several problems with current importance for determining whether a thyroid nodule may be a thyroid cancer. Thyroid nodules as small as 2 mm are often detected very effectively with current high-resolution ultrasonography employing a 12 MHz to 16 MHz probe. Nodules as small as 5 mm can be biopsied by FNA. This leads to the question of what to do about such nodules. A recent study of 243 papillary thyroid microcarcinomas, defined as smaller than 10 mm, found that none of these smaller than 8 mm had distant metastases during follow-up for a median of 5.1 years. A Study of 211 patients with papillary microcarcinomas showed that tumors smaller than 7 mm attended not enlarge or spread to lymph nodes over a four-year period of follow-up by ultrasound. Therefore, it seems reasonable to avoid biopsy of a nodule but 7 mm, albeit it's going to be a papillary microcarcinoma. There are exceptions to all or any clinical rules; i might biopsy a little nodule if there was a robust case history of thyroid cancer. Follicular lesions of the thyroid encompass a good spectrum of diseases with clinicopathologic overlap, including benign follicular adenoma, malignant follicular carcinoma, and follicular variant of papillary cancer.