Correlation of ultrasound findings with the diagnosis of malignant thyroid pathology

Abstract

The advancement and availability of ultrasound in recent decades has increased the detection rate of thyroid nodules. It is of utmost importance to characterize the nature of these as malignant or benign. The Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TIRADS) classification is a risk stratification system to classify thyroid lesions using ultrasound. It takes into account as suspicious characteristics the presence of a solid nodule, microcalcifications, irregular margins, hypoechogenicity and shape taller than wide. The research is observational and retrospective. Patients with suspected or confirmed histological diagnosis of thyroid cancer were included. The statistical treatment was carried out with RStudio and Microsoft Excel 2016. The relationship between the variables was established through contingency tables applying Fisher's exact test, taking P-value of ≤0.05. As a result of the work, 37 cases were investigated, of which 25 (67.57%) were women. The mean age was 50.48 ± 14.71 years. The study shows that there was no significant relationship between the TIRADS and the Bethesda classification. On the contrary, there was a relationship between microcalcifications and the Bethesda classification. As for the other ultrasound variables under study, they did not present a good level of statistical significance to establish their dependence on the histopathological result. The work shows that TIRADS represents a good imaging classification system to establish the risk of malignancy; however, studies with larger samples are needed to establish the dependency relationship between the variables studied.