What is the contribution of aspiration cytology?

Aspiration cytology of thyroid nodules is essentially designed to determine the benign nature of the nodule in order to avoid purely diagnosis surgery . It is reliable in the diagnosis of anaplastic papillary and medullary car cinomas and most lymphomas, but is more problematical for the diagnosis of the benign or malignant nature of Hurthle cell tumours and certain vesicula r tumours, in which cytology reveals a suspicious, doubtful or undetermined appearance. However, whether they are unambiguous or doubtful, fine needle aspiration cytology results help the surgeon to define the therapeutic str ategy under the best possible conditions. A therapeutic approach is propose d, based on the formulation of aspiration cytology results into benign, mal ignant, suspicious and inadequate.