Thyroid Pathology
Pathology is the medical discipline that provides diagnostic information to patients and clinicians. It impacts almost all aspects of patient care, from diagnosing cancer to managing chronic diseases through accurate laboratory testing. A thyroid pathology report is a document that contains the diagnosis determined by examining cells and tissues under a microscope. The report may also contain information about the size, shape, and appearance of a specimen as it looks to the naked eye. This information is known as the gross description.
Disorders of the thyroid gland essentially fall into two basic categories: Endocrine and Neoplastic. Endocrine disease lead to dysregulated levels of thyroid hormones, termed hyperthyroidism (excess hormone) or hypothyroidism (insufficient hormone). neoplastic disease of the thyroid is generally uncommon but can range from harmless adenomas to highly aggressive carcinomas.
As mentioned, this category of diseases leads to either hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, meaning excess or insufficient systemic levels of thyroid hormones, respectively. Hyperthyroidism and Hypothyroidism are in reality clinical syndromes which can be caused by a variety of etiopathogenic processes.
Pathology after surgery
In most hospitals, the final pathology report is produced several days after the initial thyroid surgery. Therefore, if a patient needs a second operation to remove the remaining thyroid gland, he or she must be readmitted to the hospital.
If the lesion looks highly suspicious in the nature, then your surgeon may elect to perform a total thyroidectomy. However, most of the time, your surgeon will elect to be conservative, only doing the lesser procedure and wait until a final pathology report (usually one to two weeks) is available.
Another thing that is very important is how to continue levothyroxine after thyroid surgery. The patient should visit the surgeon for a pathology test after the surgery. Based on the results of the test, the surgeon will determine whether levothyroxine should be continued or not. Also, if necessary, the drug dose is determined.
Types of pathology and its results
One of the types of pathology is frozen pathology or immediate intraoperative pathology, in which the surgeon removes part of it during thyroid surgery and gives it to the pathologist for testing, and based on this, the pathologist determines whether it is malignant or benign. He informs and if it is malignant, the surgeon will remove the entire thyroid. Here pathology helps to determine how much of the thyroid should be removed.
Another task that pathology does is to determine the type of treatment, so that if it is diagnosed as benign, levothyroxine is prescribed immediately after surgery and the patient starts taking it, but if the result of the pathology is malignant. Diagnose that the patient is preparing for iodine therapy, and after the iodine therapy process, levothyroxine is prescribed and the patient must take it after iodine therapy.
click for more information about: 14 important questions after thyroid surgery with answers
References
http://www.pathwaymedicine.org/thyroid-pathology#:~:text=Overview,or%20hypothyroidism%20(insufficient%20hormone).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221541/
https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/tsh-thyroid-stimulating-hormone-test/
