Thyroid fine-needle biopsy: aspiration versus capillary.

UNLABELLED Thyroid nodules are a common pathology of the thyroid gland. Thyroid fine-needle biopsy (FNB) is a technique used as the first step in the assessment of thyroid nodules. Some au- thors have demonstrated the superiority of nonaspiration compared with aspiration biopsy. AIM The objective was to assess whether there are significant differences between the two thyroid biopsy techniques. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study group comprised 309 patients with thyroid nodules admitted to the Endocrinology Clinic of the Iasi "St. Spiridon "Hospital between 2005 and 2008 in which fine-needle nonaspiration or aspiration biopsy was performed. The slides were read by one pathologist. The smears were stained using the May-Grunwald-Giemsa method (MGG). The quality of smears obtained by the two sampling techniques was evaluated by using the scoring system developed by Mair. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION No differences in smear quality between the two sampling techniques in terms of blood contamination, amount of cellular material, degree of cellular degeneration, degree of cellular trauma, and preservation of appropriate architecture were found. CONCLUSION The results of this study show that the sensitivity and specificity of both techniques allow their use as standard screening methods for thyroid nodular lesions.