Acta Clinica Croatica (Jan 2020)

Thyroglobulin Measurement in Needle Aspiration for Detection of Recurrences and Neck Metastases in Patients with Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma: Significance of Anti-Tg Antibodies

  • Ivan Blažeković,
  • Matija Romić,
  • Marija Bosak Butković,
  • Ines Šiško Markoš,
  • Vedrana Gladić Nenadić,
  • Valentina Vidranski,
  • Petra Petranović Ovčariček,
  • Dražena Krilić,
  • Tea Varjačić,
  • Josip Staničić,
  • Roko Granić,
  • Marija Punda,
  • Ivan Mihaljević,
  • Tomislav Jukić,
  • Maja Franceschi

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 59., no. Supplement 1
pp. 9 – 17

Abstract

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The worldwide incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) has increased in recent decades, likely due to frequent use of cervical ultrasonography (US) and US-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNA)., US is performed during follow-up after thyroidectomy, and US-guided FNA with cytology is used if suspicious cervical lymph nodes (LN ) or thyroid bed masses are detected. Knowing that serum anti-Tg antibodies (sTgAb) affect the use of serum Tg (sTg) as a tumor marker, the aim of our study was to assess the usefulness of Tg determination in needle aspirates (FNA-Tg) in presence of sTgAb. This retrospective study included 149 patients with DTC and 159 aspirations of suspicious LN and thyroid bed masses. As expected, there was a negative correlation between sTg and sTgAb levels (p<0.05), while FNA-Tg levels had a positive correlation with FNATgAb levels (p<0.05). Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between sTg and FNA-Tg levels (p<0.05), but not between sTgAb and FNA-TgAb or sTgAb and FNA-Tg. In conclusion, these results show that FNA-Tg values were not affected by sTgAb and that FNA-Tg measurement were highly effective in detecting cervical DTC metastases. However, combined use with cytology is suggested for neck evaluation because cytology could reveal metastases from other tumor sites.

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