There are International and Russian guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of medullary thyroid carcinoma. There is a recommendation to determine the basal level of calcitonin for all patients with nodular thyroid disease at the all of these documents. However, this test is not performed for this category of patients routinely even in large clinics for a number of reasons, the main one, which seems to be an economic issue. Six months ago a patient addressed to our clinic who underwent surgical treatment for a papillary carcinoma (follicular variant) of the thyroid gland in the volume of thyroidectomy with pre-tracheal lymphodissection and subsequent course of radioiodine therapy at the place of residence. A relapse of the disease was suspected on the control examination at the place of residence and the patient was sent for consultation to the polyclinic of the N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology. In our clinic, diagnostic studies were carried out, including a revision of the finished cytological and histological preparations and a conclusion was obtained – medullary carcinoma of the thyroid. Determination of basal level of calcitonin in serum showed a value of 1292 pg/ml. The level of basal calcitonin significantly decreased after repeated surgical treatment. This case shows that in order to avoid such mistake, which is described in our clinical case, it seems necessary to follow the national recommendations, international standards to determine the level of basal calcitonin for all patients with thyroid nodal pathology who consulted and treated in medical institutions.

A corrigendum on «Medullary thyroid cancer. Returning to the need to determine the preoperative basal calcitonin level in patients with thyroid nodular pathology» by Elena E. Stanyakina, Ilia S. Romanov, Tatiana T. Kondratieva, Alexander S. Krylov, Alexey D. Ryzhkov, Sergey V. Shiryaev (2018). Endocrine Surgery. 12(4). doi: 10.14341/serg10044 There is an error on the page 189: "Blood test for hormones: thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) — 52.6 mIU/l (reference values 0.25–4.0), adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) <20 IU/ml (0–30), thyreoglobulin (TG) <0.2 ng/ml (0–30)". Instead of "antibodies to thyroglobulin (ATTG)" was published "adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)". The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

Introduction. Thyroid cancer is one of the most common malignant neoplasms of the endocrine system. well-differentiated thyroid cancer constitutes about 90 % of all malignant tumors of the thyroid gland. Despite growing morbidity and high incidence of this pathology, in case of timely diagnosis and treatment well-differentiated thyroid cancer has favorable prognosis.Aim. using clinical examples, to demonstrate the possibility of thyroglobulin measurement in needle washouts of fineneedle aspiration biopsy in the detection of cervical metastases of highly differentiated thyroid cancer.Materials and methods. five patients (2 patients with combined oncological pathology, 2 patients with nodes in the thyroid gland, 1 patient after a thyroidectomy) with cervical adenopathy measured the level of thyroglobulin in the wash out fluid of lymph-nodes biopsy using the immunoradiometric method using the commercial kits of the Institute of Isotopes-IRmA (Hungary).Results. Cervical metastases of highly differentiated thyroid cancer were detected or excluded by the determination of fine-needle aspiration biopsy in patients with non-informational cytological studies. The determination of fineneedle aspiration biopsy is a useful diagnostic method in the differential diagnosis of cervical metastases in patients who have other morphological forms of cancer in addition to well-differentiated thyroid cancer, as well as for the differential diagnosis of cervical adenopathy in patients with a history of highly differentiated thyroid cancer.Conclusion. Determination of thyroglobulin level in puncture needle washout is a simple and useful diagnostic method for differential diagnosis of metastases in lymph nodes of the neck in patients with several morphological forms of malignant tumors.