ArticleSurgery today2026
Unveiling the true impact of dominant thyroid nodules: are they really the Culprits?
Article in Surgery today, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeMultinodular goiter (MNG) is a common endocrine disorder, especially in iodine-deficient regions. While fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) is used widely for preoperative risk stratification, its diagnostic reliability in MNG remains controversial, particularly for non-dominant nodules. We evaluated the relationship between dominant nodule characteristics and the distribution of malignancy in the non-dominant lobes of patients with MNG, who had malignancy confirmed after total thyroidectomy.
methodsThis retrospective cohort study included 266 patients with MNG, who underwent total thyroidectomy between September 2020 and December 2024 and were found to have malignancy on final pathology. Preoperative FNAB results were classified using the Bethesda system and postoperative malignancy status was confirmed through final histopathological examination. The patients were divided into ipsilateral and contralateral/bilateral malignancy groups. Statistical analyses included descriptive methods, univariate and multivariate tests, analysis of variance, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses to identify the factors predicting contralateral/bilateral malignancy. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered significant.
resultsMalignancy was detected in 266 of 577 patients who underwent total thyroidectomy (46.1%), representing the malignancy rate within the surgical cohort rather than the overall MNG population. In this malignant surgical subset, the rate of FNAB-pathology discordance was 20.4%, predominantly driven by Bethesda II (benign) cytology. Contralateral or bilateral malignancy was more common in patients with compression symptoms. ROC analyses identified exploratory size cutoff values (34 mm and 30.5 mm) for predicting laterality among cases of malignancy.
conclusionLarger dominant nodules were more frequently associated with malignancy in non-dominant nodules; however, this observation should be interpreted as exploratory given the limited discriminatory performance of the ROC analyses. These findings suggest that a thorough preoperative evaluation of all nodules, beyond the dominant one, may be warranted in selected patients with multinodular goiter. Further prospective studies are required to validate these preliminary observations and establish whether they should influence surgical decision-making.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42474768What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.