Interferon treatment makes it possible to achieve a persistent cure in patients with BCC and SCC in a high proportion of cases. The potential advantage of nonsurgical treatment are an enhancement of cosmetic results through the prevention of destruction of important anatomic structures.
The cytologic finding was negative in 1841 patients; accurate in 1763 (95.8%). Suspicious cytology proved malignant in 82 of 252 patients (32.5%). Positive cytology was accurate in 88 out of 97 cases (90.7%). In 1942 benign goiters, cytology was accurate in 90.8% of patients, false suspicious in 8.7% and false positive in 0.5%; the highest percentage of misdiagnosis was in adenomas (15.8%) and thyroiditis (19.0). In 248 malignant goiters, cytology was accurate in 35.5% of patients, suspicious in 33.1%, and false negative in 31.4%. False-negative cytology was found in 44% of follicular cancers, 22.2% of papillary and medullary, and 12.9% anaplastic. The most frequent false-negative cytologic diagnosis was the adenomatous goiter. The accuracy of cytology was statistically higher in papillary cancers than in follicular (77.8% vs 56.0%), in undifferentiated tumors than in differentiated (83.7% vs 65.0%), and in adenomatous nontoxic goiters than in adenomas, thyroiditis and toxic goiters (80.3% vs 42.7%), 20.1% and 13.4%). Positive preoperative fine needle aspiration biopsy cytology is a worthwhile and reliable finding; it fails in less than 10% of patients. Negative cytology, however, does not exclude malignancy in thyroid nodes; it is false negative in more than 30% of cancers.
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