Association between fine needle aspiration cytology and final pathology in the diagnosis of thyroid nodules with surgical indications.

Fine needle aspiration of thyroid (FNA) is broadly used as the preferred preoperatory test to evaluate thyroid nodules. The clinical importance of this procedure is primarily related the need to exclude Thyroid Cancer. There are few studies investigating the association between FNA and final pathology in patients with thyroid nodules with surgical indications. There is no evidence from studies in the southern area of Puerto Rico that investigate this association. This was a randomized cross-sectional study, 82 medical records were evaluated. Data were obtained for FNA diagnosis, demographics, body mass index, findings on ultrasound and histopathology results. In this study the sensitivity of FNA was 73.53% and specificity of 100%. The accuracy of the study was 78%. The study reported a prevalence of 83% malignant tumors in the final pathology and 61% in the FNA. The positive predictive value was 100% and negative 43.75%, suggesting that FNA is a good diagnostic test to detect thyroid nodules suspicious for malignancy. FNA of 33 patients was reported with undetermined cytopathology. The measure of agreement and correlation coefficient showed a moderate agreement between both studies with a Kappa value of 0.487, suggesting that the test results of FNA and final pathology are associated. Of the indeterminate nodules, final pathology reported 15 benign and 18 malignant. This study demonstrated that the FNA is reliable in identifying thyroid nodules in patients with surgical indications.