Publications by authors named "Barbara Puligheddu"

Background: The clinical management of repeatedly non-diagnostic thyroid nodules (RNDNs) via fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAc) is a matter of debate because current recommendations and clinical practice are not based on high-quality evidence. Our purpose was to characterize RNDNs and evaluate their clinical management in our centers.

Methods: This retrospective observational study included 319 consecutive patients who underwent ultrasound (US-)guided FNAc in two Italian academic hospitals between 2016 and 2020 and had previous cytology non-diagnostic result (TIR1).

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Introduction: Post-operative hypocalcemia and postoperative persistent hypoparathyroidism remain the most common complications after thyroidectomy. Many approaches have been developed to prevent them, but actually, a common protocol is not yet individuated.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the results of a prospectively collected database.

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Article Synopsis
  • Recent research highlights the importance of improving risk stratification for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) beyond the existing 2015 American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines.
  • A study utilizing the Italian Thyroid Cancer Observatory database analyzed 4,773 DTC cases to develop a decision tree model that predicts persistent/recurrent disease by considering a range of predictive factors.
  • The new model demonstrated better performance than the ATA guidelines by increasing sensitivity and predictive accuracy, suggesting that incorporating additional variables like age and tumor size can enhance patient risk assessment.
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The role of minimal extrathyroidal extension (mETE) as a risk factor for persistent papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is still debated. The aims of this study were to assess the clinical impact of mETE as a predictor of worse initial treatment response in PTC patients and to verify the impact of radioiodine therapy after surgery in patients with mETE. We reviewed all records in the Italian Thyroid Cancer Observatory database and selected 2237 consecutive patients with PTC who satisfied the inclusion criteria (PTC with no lymph node metastases and at least 1 year of follow-up).

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Unlabelled: Recently, thyroid (99m)Tc-methoxyisobutylisonitrile ((99m)Tc-MIBI) scintiscanning has been proposed in an attempt to preoperatively identify thyroid malignancies, but discrepant results have been reported for oncocytic lesions. The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of visual and semiquantitative analyses of (99m)Tc-MIBI scintigraphy for preoperatively characterizing thyroid nodules with indeterminate cytologic diagnoses, segregating in advance nononcocytic variants from those that are oncocytic. This study also aimed to analyze the relationship between (99m)Tc-MIBI images and P-glycoprotein (P-gp)/multidrug resistance-associated protein-1 (MRP1) immunohistochemical expression.

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