title: Cytologic grading of aggressive and nonaggressive variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma.
abstract: To distinguish preoperatively between the usual nonaggressive (classic, follicular, and mixed-papillary and follicular variants) and the aggressive (tall-cell, columnar-cell, and sclerosing diffuse) variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the fine-needle aspiration cytologic smears of 30 cases of PTC were retrospectively reviewed. A three-class grading system, based on the evaluation of four cytologic parameters (cell size, number of nuclear pseudoinclusions, nuclear pleomorphism, and type of chromatin), was applied to each case. A statistically significant association between the cytologic classes and the histologic features of the cases was found. All cytologic grade 1 cases corresponded to the nonaggressive histologic variants, whereas all cytologic grade 3 cases showed features of the aggressive variants of PTC at histologic level.
authors.affiliation: Divisione di Anatomia Patologica, Istituto Nazionale per to Studio e la Cura dei Tumori, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Damiani
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dina
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Eusebi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001707:Biopsy, Needle; D002291:Carcinoma, Papillary / Q000473:pathology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013964:Thyroid Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*