Hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease: Is an ultrasound examination needed?

A recent survey conducted on practicing endocrinologist in Europe showed an increasing trend toward using US for morphological diagnosis of the thyroid gland.[ 3 ] The sensitivity of identifying the nodules reduces with the decreasing size of the nodules; however, clinical examination is not sensitive in identifying all larger nodules as well.[ 4 ] (ii) Patients with nodular thyroid gland and hyperthyroidism warrant further investigation with radionuclide uptake scans to document if the nodule is “hot” or “cold.” The estimated prevalence of thyroid cancer in hot nodules is variable but can be as high as 3.1%.[ 5 ] The majority of these tend to be papillary thyroid cancers.

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