[The use of color Doppler sonography in the diagnosis of thyroid pathology].

Color Flow Doppler Sonography (CFD) is a technique that gives us useful information related to blood flow and consequently about some organs or tissues physiology and morphology. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some new developments on CFD's role in the diagnosis of thyroid disease, an application that has recently been put forward. Some studies using CFD have described, as in the case of other organs and tissues, the main qualities of gland's parenchyma vascularity both in physiological conditions and in the instance of diffuse and/or focal thyroid diseases. A large part of these studies have dealt with the aspects of hypervascularity in malignant thyroid neoplasms, focusing on the meaning of the intranodular hypervascularity in the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant thyroid lesions. CFD, although reported as having high sensibility and specificity, is not yet in a position to improve much on the current limits of fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB), in particular in the case of "follicular proliferation" where the distinction between benign adenoma and thyroid carcinoma is still a frequent problem. Further studies are required to evaluate if CFD can reduce the percentage of patients to be operated upon because of unclear cytological pattern.