Diagnostic Value of Preoperative Serum Thyroglobulin Measurement for the Diagnosis of Malignancy in Follicular or Hürthle Cell Neoplasms of the Thyroid Gland

Article information

Kosin Med J. 2014;29(1):17-22

Publication date (electronic) : 2014 December 17

doi : https://doi.org/10.7180/kmj.2014.29.1.17

Nam Kyu Kim , Seong Joo Kang , Weon Hyoung Lee , Go Eun Yeo , You Jin Han , Bu Kyung Kim , Su Kyoung Kwon , Yo-Han Park , Young Sik Choi

Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, Kosin University, Busan, Korea

Corresponding Author: Young Sik Choi, Department of Internal Medicine, Kosin University College of Medicine, 34 Amnam dong, Seo-gu, Busan 602-702, Korea TEL: +82-51-990-6102 FAX: +82-51-248-5686 E-mail: yschoi@kosinmed.or.kr

Received 2013 June 04; Revised 2013 August 20; Accepted 2013 September 09.

Abstract

Objectives

The aim of this retrospective study was whether serum Tg predicts malignancy in follicular or Hürthle-cell neoplasms on fine needle aspiration.

Methods

A chart review of 111 patients (90 females, 21 males; mean age 46.8 ± 11.9 years) with follicular or Hürthle-cell neoplasms on fine needle aspiration, who were surgically treated between Sep. 2001 and Sep. 2011, was performed. Predictive factors for malignancy were identified by the chi-squared test and multivariate logistic regression.

Results

There were no differences between 41 malignant and 70 benign lesions in serum Tg or any of the normalized indexes. Receiver-operator characteristic analysis revealed no cutoff value. Lesions with serum Tg levels greater than 500 g/L had no significant difference. And also there were no independent predictors of malignancy by multivariate logistic regression.

Conclusions

In this study, the author found that serum Tg has poor accuracy for predicting malignancy in follicular or Hürthle cell neoplasms on fine needle aspiration.

Keywords: Follicular neoplasm; Hü; rthle cell neoplasm; Serum thyroglobulin; Thyroid carcinoma

Fig. 1.

Box plot comparison of serum thyroglobulin values between benign and malignant neoplasms with follicular or Hürthle cell neoplasm on fine needle aspiration.

Table 1.

Clinical characteristics of study subjects

Table 2.

Histologic diagnosis of study samples

Table 3.

Comparison of malignant and benign histology groups

Table 4.

Clinicopathologic parameters associated with malignant pathology in patients with follicular and Hürthle cell neoplasm on cytology

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