Role of Elastography in Differentiating Malignant and Benign Thyroid Nodules using FNAC as a Reference Standard
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48036/apims.v20iSUPPL-1.1097Keywords:
Elastography, Thyroid nodules, Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), benignAbstract
Objective: To determine the efficacy of elastography in differentiating between malignant and benign thyroid nodules, using fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as the reference standard.
Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Radiology Department of Nishtar Hospital, Multan, from January 2023 to December 2023. A total of 180 patients with one or more solid thyroid nodules diagnosed on conventional ultrasound were enrolled in the study. After obtaining consent, all patients underwent strain elastography under standard protocol, and the findings were compared with cytological results. Sensitivity was calculated using the formula: True Positives / (True Positives + False Negatives). Specificity was calculated as: True Negatives / (True Negatives + False Positives). Positive predictive value (PPV) was calculated as: True Positives / (True Positives + False Positives). Negative predictive value (NPV) was calculated as: True Negatives / (True Negatives + False Negatives). Diagnostic accuracy was determined using the formula: (True Positives + True Negatives) / (True Positives + True Negatives + False Positives + False Negatives). All these values were calculated using a 2x2 contingency table.
Results: The study included a total of 180 patients with an average age of 46.38±12.21 years, 76.1% of whom were male and 23.9% female. Among the patients, 9.4% had malignant thyroid nodules, while 90.6% had benign nodules as determined by elastography and confirmed by FNAC. In terms of diagnostic accuracy, 13 patients were true positives (both positive on cytology FNAC and ultrasound elastography), whereas 7 patients were false positives (negative on cytology FNAC but positive on ultrasound elastography).
Conclusion: Elastography has high efficacy in differentiating malignant from benign thyroid nodules and can potentially replace fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Maham Munir Awan, Malik Mudasir Hassan, Hina Hanif Mughal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.