الفهرس 
Anatomy of Thyroid Gland
PHYSIOLOGY OF THE THYROID GLANDOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Thyroid nodules are very common and are found in 4% to 8% of adults by palpation, 41% by ultrasound, and 50% by pathologic examination at autopsy. Most nodules are benign, with less than 5% of them being malignant. Cytological examination of material obtained by fine needle aspiration (FNA), due to its high sensitivity and specificity, is the best single test for proportion of nodules are not correctly diagnosed before surgical treatment, and histological examination is required. Sonography has many favorable features, such as detection of nonpalpable nodules, estimation of nodule size/goiter volume, and guidance for fine needle biopsy (FNB). High-resolution ultrasound is very sensitive in detection of thyroid nodules, enabling differentiation of solid and cystic lesions. Atypia and Atypical cells is one of limitation of fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology of thyroid nodules, clinical and echo graphic features being poorly predictive of malignancy. The newly developed real-time ultrasound elastography (USE) has been previously applied to help to differentiate malignant from benign lesions. The principle of USE is to acquire two ultrasonographic images (before and after tissue compression by the probe), and to track tissue displacement by assessing the propagation of the US beam by a dedicated software. The US elastography was displayed over the Bmode image in a color scale that ranged from red, for components with greatest elastic strain (i.e. softer components), to blue for those with no strain (i. e harder components). The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate thyroid nodules by US elastography. In this study, 20 cases were included from which 19 cases were benign and only one case was malignant. The cases were subjected to complete US, Doppler examination, and US elastography the results were compared to U/S guided FNAC. We conclude that US-elastography is a promising technique that combined with other US modalities is easy and rapid to perform and can help to identify thyroid nodules that are likely to be malignant. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), the gold standard. Indeed, elastography could reduce FNAC or at least allow to select nodule’s (or nodular zone’s) for aspirations. In our opinion, further studies are necessary before being able to conclude about the place of elastography in thyroid nodules evaluation as our study has small sample of patients.