ArticleCancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology2015
Benign and Malignant Thyroid Incidentalomas Are Rare in Routine Clinical Practice: A Review of 97,908 Imaging Studies.
Article in Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Breast-Thyroid Cancer Link: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2016Pooled it
- Precision medicine in thyroid nodules: current strategies, challenges, and future directions.Hormones (Athens, Greece) · 2026Review
- Natural history and long-term follow-up of incidental thyroid nodules on CT imaging.The British journal of radiology · 2025Article
- The clinical significance and burden of thyroid nodules discovered incidentally.Irish journal of medical science · 2025Observational
- Thyroid Incidentalomas: Scrutinizing the Mode of Detection and Evaluating its Contribution to Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis.Indian journal of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery : official publication of the Association of Otolaryngologists of India · 2024Article
- Towards in vivo characterization of thyroid nodules suspicious for malignancy using multispectral optoacoustic tomography.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2023Article
- Thyroid Incidentalomas in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19: A Single-Center Retrospective Analysis.Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2023Article
- Article
- Incidentalomas in the head & neck.The British journal of radiology · 2023Review
- The use of modified TI-RADS using contrast-enhanced ultrasound features for classification purposes in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules: A prospective and multi-center study.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Article
- Updated clinical management guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic: thyroid nodules and cancer.European journal of endocrinology · 2022Review
- Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Enhanced Ultrasonographic Image Diagnosis of Differentiated Thyroid Cancer.Biomedicines · 2021Article
- [Clinical practice guidelines "Management of iodine deficiency disorders"].Problemy endokrinologii · 2021Article
- Incidental detection of colorectal lesions onEndoscopy international open · 2020Article
- Increasing Thyroid Cancer Incidence in Oman: A Joinpoint Trend Analysis.Oman medical journal · 2020Article
- Prevalence of Thyroid Incidentalomas from 1995 to 2016: A Single-Center, Retrospective Cohort Study.Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2020Article
- The Frequency of Focal Thyroid Incidental Findings and Risk of Malignancy Detected by 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography in an Iodine Deficient Population.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- Growing incidence of thyroid carcinoma in recent years: Factors underlying overdiagnosis.Head & neck · 2018Review
- Observational
- The changing incidence of thyroid cancer.Nature reviews. Endocrinology · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposeThyroid nodules incidentally identified on imaging are thought to contribute to the increasing incidence of thyroid cancer. We aim to determine the true rate of incidental thyroid nodule reporting, malignancy rates of these nodules, and to compare these findings with rates of detection by dedicated radiology review.
methodsA cross-sectional analysis was done to determine the prevalence of thyroid nodules in radiologist reports by analyzing all reports for CT, PET, and MRI scans of the head, neck, and chest as well as neck ultrasounds performed at a tertiary care center from 2007 to 2012. Retrospective chart review was performed on patients with a reported thyroid nodule to determine clinical outcomes of these nodules. Radiology reports were compared with dedicated radiology review of 500 randomly selected CT scans from the study group to determine the difference between clinical reporting and actual prevalence of thyroid nodules.
results97,908 imaging studies met inclusion criteria, and 387 (0.4%) thyroid incidentalomas were identified on radiology report. One hundred and sixty three (42.1%) of these nodules were worked up with fine-needle aspiration, diagnosing 27 thyroid cancers (0.03% of all studies, 7.0% of reported incidentalomas). The prevalence of incidentalomas clinically reported was 142/100,000 CT scans, 638/100,000 MRIs, 358/100,000 PET scans, and 6,594/100,000 ultrasounds. In contrast, review of CT scans screening for thyroid nodules had a prevalence of 10%.
conclusionRoutine clinical reporting of incidental thyroid nodules is far less common than on dedicated review. IMPACT: These data contradict the notion that incidentalomas contribute significantly to rising thyroid cancer rates.
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