The Utility of Pre operative Serum Thyroid Stimulating Hormone Level For Predicting Malignancy in Nodular Thyroid Disease And Their Clinical Study

Many patients present to the surgical department with a thyroid nodule. However not all require surgery and only 5-6% of these are malignant. There are many methods to diagnose and predict malignancy in a thyroid nodule. This study throws light on the usefulness of TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) estimation and its role in predicting malignancy. This is a prospective study involving 100 patients admitted to our hospital with thyroid swellings suspicious of malignancy. The objective was to evaluate the utility of serum TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) estimation as a biochemical predictor of malignancy in suspicious thyroid nodules and to study the clinical presentation of thyroid malignancies.The mean preoperative TSH value was 2.39±1.42 mU/L. Mean TSH value in malignancy was higher (3.71±1.22mU/L) compared to those with benign disease (1.80±1.03mU/L).Incidence of malignancy increased with higher TSH values. We concludedin our study the utility of pre-operative serum TSH level as a predictor of malignancy and it showed statistically significant (p <0.01) between higher TSH levelsand malignant nodules. TSH levels could be used as predictor in clinically suspect malignant thyroid swelling with a benign FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology) report. In such cases where TSH value is high, the FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology) can be relocked to confirm the diagnosis.