Comparison of Conventional Smears with Liquid Preparations and Their Combined Use in Thyroid Cytopathology: A Multi-Institutional Study
Authors' conclusion
LBP demonstrated superior diagnostic performance compared with CS, but combined use of both methods provided no significant advantage over LBP alone.
Study context
- Population
- Thyroid FNA cases of thyroid nodules, 16 medical centers, June 2010–November 2025
- Participants
- 89,392 thyroid FNA cases
- Comparison
- Conventional smears vs liquid-based preparations vs combined use
- Conventional smears (CS)n = 49,309reference
- Liquid-based preparations (LBP)n = 13,161
- Combinedn = 26,922
- Outcome
- Diagnostic performance in histologically confirmed samples
Methodological detailsmulti-institutional, 16 medical centers
- Multi-institutional
- 16 medical centers
Performance
As reported in the abstract
| Test or model | Sensitivity | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|
| LBP | 98.1% | 97.0% |
| CS | 95.0% | 93.7% |
Sensitivity
LBP98.1%
CS95.0%
Accuracy
LBP97.0%
CS93.7%
Further findings
Indeterminate nodule rate
Nondiagnostic rate
Multi-diagnoses subgroup: CS-LBP concordance among diagnostic samples
- CS-LBP concordance
- 92.9%
- Comparable diagnostic performance across all methods
Original publication
Comparison of Conventional Smears with Liquid Preparations and Their Combined Use in Thyroid Cytopathology: A Multi-Institutional Study. Thyroid. Published 1 June 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →