Clinician-performed thyroid ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration.

Fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNA) is the key step in selecting most patients with thyroid nodules for or against surgery. Accurate acquisition of cytologic samples from suspicious lesions is achieved by adding ultrasound guidance to optimize targeting as well as to enable sampling from nonpalpable lesions. This article discusses the indications, variations, and technical details of ultrasound-guided FNA.