Abstract
Involvement of cervical lymph nodes by metastatic disease is reported in 20–50 % of patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer. Fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNA) is usually required to confirm or rule out metastasis because reactive lymphadenopathy is common in the neck region. Because of a small but substantial percentage of false-negative cases, thyroglobulin (Tg) assay of aspirate from cervical lymph nodes has been advocated to supplement FNA of suspicious lymph node in patients with proven or suspected differentiated thyroid cancer. A high sensitivity (95 %) and specificity (95 %) in the detection of nodal metastases from differentiated thyroid carcinoma have been reported with Tg assay. However, Tg assay of FNA should not replace cytologic evaluation because of the potential of both false-positive and negative results. In addition, standardization in terms of sample collection and analysis is still lacking.
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Adeniran, A.J., Chhieng, D. (2016). Thyroglobulin Detection in Fine-Needle Aspiration of Nodal Metastases from Differentiated Thyroid Cancers. In: Common Diagnostic Pitfalls in Thyroid Cytopathology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31602-4_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31602-4_16
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