Comparison of diagnostic values between ultrasound elastography

ONCOLOGY LETTERS

Comparison of diagnostic values between ultrasound elastography and ultrasound‑guided thyroid nodular puncture in thyroid nodules XIAOJIE PAN and LEI WANG Department of Ultrasound, Liaocheng People's Hospital, Liaocheng, Shandong 252000, P.R. China Received April 16, 2018; Accepted July 24, 2018 DOI: 10.3892/ol.2018.9257 Abstract. Diagnostic value between ultrasound elastog‑ raphy and ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture biopsy in thyroid nodules was compared to provide reference for the selection of thyroid nodule (TN) diagnostic mode. A total of 194 patients with TN, admitted from June 2014 to June 2015, were selected to be treated with ultrasound elastography and ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture biopsy. The ultrasonic elasticity score and results of ultrasound‑guided TN puncture were compared with diagnostic results of surgical or ultra‑ sound follow‑up for 12 months, and the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of differentiating and diagnosing TN of the two methods were calculated to compare the clinical diagnostic values. A total of 194 patients were diagnosed with TN 217, including 129 benign and 88 malignant lesions. All the nodules were obtained by effective ultrasound elastography and ultra‑ sound‑guided fine needle puncture cytological pathological specimens, and it was diagnosed by ultrasound elastography that there were 75 benign nodules and 142 malignant nodules. It was diagnosed by ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture that there were 112 benign, 78 malignant and 27 uncertain nodules. The specificity and accuracy of ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture in the diagnosis of TN were higher than that of ultrasound elastography and the differences were statistically significant (P0.05). Ultrasound elastography in the diagnosis of TN has a low specificity and the diagnosis of ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture biopsy may have uncertain results. There are some defects in the two diagnostic schemes and their combined application

can complement each other's advantages and improve the early diagnostic efficiency of TN. Introduction As the largest endocrine organ in the human body, thyroid plays an important role in regulating the metabolic process of human body (1). Thyroid nodule (TN), is the most common thyroid disease in clinical practice. TN is a disease caused by abnormal growth of thyroid follicles in patients, most of which are benign lesions such as goiter and thyroid adenoma, but TN can also lead to malignant lesions such as thyroid carcinoma and lymphoma (2,3). It has been reported (4) that the main reason for the significant increase of the incidence of thyroid cancer in the past 30 years is that there are no obvious clinical manifestations before the onset of thyroid cancer and it is very easy to have missed diagnosis. After thyroidectomy, the impairment of body function is accompanied by a variety of complications, which has a serious impact on the quality of life and safety of patients (5). Therefore, the diagnosis and differentiation of TN is particularly important. There was a survey showing (6) that the diagnosis rate of diagnosing TN patients was 3 were classified as malignant nodules (10). Ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture. In the present study, 16G automatic biopsy needle was used for ultra‑ sound‑guided puncture performed on patients. The patient presented supine position and exposed the neck. Routine disin‑ fection was done and towels were held. The fixed converter was adjusted and fixed, the lesion was placed in the center of ultrasound image and the direction of the needle was inclined along the scanning plane. When the puncture reached the location of the lesion, the tissue of the lesion was sucked and biopsy was carried out. Results of cytological test referred to the literature (11): Benign: cytological detection was benign; malignant: cytological detection was malignant; uncertain: uncertain, suspicious as malignant nodules. An image of ultra‑ sound puncture is shown in Fig. 1. Statistical method. In this experiment, SPSS 20.0 statistical software package (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) was used to analyze the collected data, and GraphPad software was used to draw the histogram. The sensitivity was equal to true malignancy divided by pathological diagnosis of malignancy, the specificity was equal to true benign divided by pathologic diagnosis of benign, and the accuracy was equal to true malig‑ nancy plus true benign and then divided by total number of nodules. The counting data were expressed by rate (%), and analyzed by the Chi‑square test. P45 ≤45 Benign lesion (n=129) Adenomatous goiter Follicular adenoma Proliferative nodule Malignant lesion (n=88) Papillary thyroid carcinoma Follicular thyroid carcinoma Medullary carcinoma

79 115 105 89 82 25 22 81 6 1

Table Ⅱ. Elastic ultrasound ratings. Ratings Standards 1 point 2 points 3 points 4 points 5 points

The nodules and surrounding tissues are green The nodules were mixed with blue and green, but mostly green The nodules were mixed with blue and green, but mostly blue The nodule is blue The nodules and surrounding tissues are blue

Results Diagnostic results of the two methods. In this study, 194 patients were detected and it was found that the number of nodules diagnosed through surgical or ultrasound follow‑up for 12 months was 217, including 129 benign nodules and 88 malignant nodules. Through ultrasound elastography, it was diagnosed that there were 75 benign nodules and 142 malig‑ nant nodules, and through ultrasound‑guided puncture, it was diagnosed that there were 112 benign nodules, 78 malignant nodules and 27 uncertain nodules (Tables Ⅲ and Ⅳ). Comparison of diagnostic values of the two methods. Through the calculation of the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy by the two detection methods, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference (P>0.05) between the sensitivity of ultrasound elastography (69.32%) and that of ultrasound‑guided fine needle puncture (64.77%). By contrasting the specificity of ultrasound elastography, it was found that there was a significant difference (P