Differential Diagnosis of Nodular Goiter by Means of Aspiration Biopsy Cytology: Results in recent five years

A series of the aspiration biopsy cytology (ABC) was conducted on 1092 patients with nodular goiter, and the accuracy of diagnosis obtained preoperatively by the ABC method was studied using 277 cases firmly diagnosed by the surgical operations. As to determination whether a nodule is benign or malignant, 5.5% was noted as false positive, 11.8% as false negative, the overall accuracy being 92.1 %. Upon diagnosis by ABC, much of them were mutually misdiagnosed between papillary proliferation and papillary carcinoma of epithelial cells partially observed in adenomatous goiter, showing the most part to be false positive and false negative. Occult carcinoma was predominated in the false negative cases. In general, although a question remains in a little more false negative cases, ABC itself indicates a high diagnosability with no expected complications. Specially as to malignant nodules, it was superior in nontraumatic determination of histological types, being able to determine the mode of operation already at the stage of examinations for outpatients.