Histopathologic patterns, cytohistologic correlation and associated factors of thyroid lesions among patients with thyroid biopsies in jimma medical center, jimma, south west Ethiopia: retrospective study

Abstract

Introduction: Thyroid diseases are major health problems, that are manifested by alteration in hormone secretion, enlargement of the thyroid gland (goiter), or both. Identifying and characterizing lesions of the thyroid gland have pivotal role since most of the lesions require medical or surgical management. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is an important initial screening tool and histopathologic examination is important in the definitive diagnosis of thyroid disease. Objective: To assess histopathologic patterns, cytohistologic correlation of thyroid lesions and associated factors among patients with thyroid biopsy. Methods: A Five-year retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from August 1 to September 30 2021. A review of 581 eligible biopsies, including 286 cases in which Fine needle aspiration was done prior to surgery, submitted from thyroidectomy specimens at Jimma medical center, pathology department from 14th September 2015 to 10th of September 2020. Data was cleaned, coded and entered into Epidata v3.1 and exported to SPSS version 26 for analysis. Descriptive and analytic studies were done. Cross tabulation, chi square test and logistic regression with multivariate analysis were done to look for associations between the study variables. A p-value<0.05 was used as a cut-off point for identifying predictors for histopathologic patterns. The findings were presented using text, tables, diagrams and charts. Result: Majority of thyroid lesions,432 (74.4%), were found to be non-neoplastic and 149 (25.6%) were neoplastic. Colloid goiter was found in 417 (71.8%) cases. Adenoma, carcinoma and thyroiditis accounted for 54 (9.3%), 95 (16.3%) and 12 (2.1%) cases respectively. Among 286 FNAC results cyto-histologic correlation was achieved in 233 (86.6%) cases. Sensitivity and specificity of FNAC were 71% and 92.7% respectively with diagnostic accuracy of 86.6%. Conclusion: Nodular colloid goiter is by far the most common thyroid lesion and Papillary thyroid carcinoma is the most frequent histologic type of malignancy. There is overall female predominance and peak age of occurrence of thyroid lesion is between 20 and 59. FNAC remains a good screening test and is an important tool for the management of thyroid lesions