Authors : Chhavi Gupta, Subhash Bhardwaj, Sindhu Sharma
DOI : 10.18231/j.ijpo.2020.074
Volume : 7
Issue : 3
Year : 2020
Page No : 369-373
Introduction: Lymphocytic thyroiditis is the second most common thyroid lesion diagnosed on FNAC after goitre. Clinical features, thyroid antibody titres, thyroid hormonal profile, and ultrasonography also aid in its diagnosis besides FNAC. The present study was carried out to evaluate thyroid fine needle aspirates for cytological features of lymphocytic thyroiditis; to grade lymphocytic thyroiditis cases based on predefined cytological criteria and to correlate cytological grades with thyroid hormonal status.
Materials and Methods: It was a three year retrospective study conducted in the Department of Pathology, Government Medical College, Jammu. Lymphocytic thyroiditis cases reported as per Bethesda system were further graded based on predefined cytological criteria as per Bhatia et al. Cytological grades were correlated with thyroid hormonal status wherever available.
Results: A total of 162 cases of lymphocytic thyroiditis were reported as per Bethesda system in our study. On further grading, majority cases were of grade II thyroiditis (104, 64.2%) followed by grade I (48, 29.6%) and grade III (10, 6.2%). Of the 78 cases with available thyroid hormonal profile, maximum patients were hypothyroid (42; 53.85%) followed by euthyroid (21; 26.92%) and hyperthyroid (15; 19.23%). There was no statistically significant association of grades with hormonal status with P value > 0.05.
Conclusion: FNAC remains the "gold standard" investigation for diagnosis of Lymphocytic thyroiditis. However, the cytological grades show no statistically significant correlation with thyroid hormonal status in our study.
Keywords: Lymphocytic thyroiditis, Cytological grading, Thyroid hormonal status.