Abstract
Background
To explore the diagnostic value of superb microvascular imaging (SMI) for ultrasonically uncertain lymph nodes (LNs).
Methods
Our center prospectively collected clinical and imaging data of 74 patients who underwent fine-needle aspiration biopsy and thyroglobulin measurement from January 2022 to June 2022. First, univariate analysis was performed to obtain relevant variables that differed between benign and malignant LN groups. Then spearman correlation was used to analyze the correlation between effective variables and pathological results. Finally, receiver operating characteristic was used to analyze the diagnostic efficiency of effective variables.
Results
In this study, there were 43 benign LNs and 31 malignant LNs. In univariate analysis, gender, age, CDFI diagnosis results and SMI diagnosis results were significantly different in the differentiation of benign and malignant LNs (P = 0.026, P = 0.041, P = 0.001, P < 0.001). CDFI and SMI diagnosis results had good correlated with pathological findings (r = 0.403, P < 0.001, r = 0.707, P < 0.001). The diagnostic efficiency of SMI (AUC = 0.856, P < 0.001) was higher than that of CDFI (AUC = 0.704, P = 0.003). And the diagnostic results of SMI were superior to those of CDFI. The number of feeding vessels showed by CDFI and SMI in malignant LNs was higher than that in benign LNs (2.00 vs. 1.00, 3.00 vs. 2.00, all P < 0.001). In all enrolled LNs, SMI showed significantly more vessels than CDFI (2.53 ± 1.47 vs. 1.50 ± 1.13, P < 0.001).
Conclusions
SMI is better than CDFI in displaying small feeding vessels and has important diagnostic value in judging the nature of LNs with ultrasound uncertainty.