Morphological Evaluation of Thyroid Lesions using High Resolution Ultrasonography and Cross Sectional Imaging in a Tertiary Care Center

Background: Thyroid diseases are second most common type of endocrine disorders. Timely and correct diagnosis helps in effective management of thyroid diseases. For diagnosis of thyroid diseases priority is always given to the clinical and imaging methods. Ultrasound examination is commonest examination after physical examination. It is easily available, non-invasive and highly informative. Sonography can be easily applied as a screening method to detect the people with an increased risk of thyroid pathology. Objectives: To evaluate the role of various radiological imaging modalities in thyroid gland lesions for pre-operative preparation. To evaluate ultrasonographical features of different thyroid lesions. Materials and Methodology: A prospective observational study carried out over a period of one and half year. A detailed clinical history was taken from enrolled patients and thorough local examination was carried out. Relevant laboratory investigations, Thyroid function Tests, were done as per the requirement. Radiological evaluation was done with X-ray soft tissue neck, high resolution gray scale color Doppler ultrasonography, and whenever required CT scan and MRI were done. The collected data were analysis using Microsoft Excel. Observations: During study period total numbers of 70 patients with thyroid lesions were included in the study. Nearly 60 % of cases were from 31-50 years of age with male to female ratio was 1: 4.4. Among all the cases commonest thyroid lesions was goiter (65.7 %) followed by thyroid neoplasm (15.7 %), Hashimoto thyroiditis (10 %), and Graves diseases (4.3 %). Conclusion: High resolution ultrasonography is an excellent modality for distinguishing normal from abnormal thyroid lesions and for morphological characterization of thyroid lesions. CT scan plays an important role in evaluating thyroid masses with sub-sternal or retro tracheal extension. CT scan is superior to sonography in staging of thyroid malignancies.