# Is there no "suspicious for Papillary" result?



## ives6797 (Apr 23, 2013)

My FNA showed Follicular Epithelial cells. In researching this, I came across this:
*
Follicular epithelial cell*
Well-differentiated carcinomas
*Papillary carcinomas 80-90%*
_Pure papillary
Follicular variant
Diffuse sclerosing variant
Tall cell, columnar cell variants_
*Follicular carcinomas 5-10%*
_Minimally invasive
Widely invasive
Hürthle cell carcinoma (oncocytic)
Insular carcinoma
Undifferentiated (anaplastic) carcinomas
_

So it looks like of the follicular epithelial cells that end up being malignant, 80-90% of them are Papillary, and only 5-10% of them are Follicular. I am so confused because with the result that I got, I assumed if it were malignant, it would be follicular cancer, but it still looks more likely to be Papillary? So is there no such thing as a "suspicious of Papillary" type result??


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## Andros (Aug 26, 2009)

ives6797 said:


> My FNA showed Follicular Epithelial cells. In researching this, I came across this:
> *
> Follicular epithelial cell*
> Well-differentiated carcinomas
> ...


Bumping up so one of our cancer experts can help answer your question.


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## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

I don't know the answer, but I stumbled on this article and know that Dr. Tuttle is a top guy in the field of thyroid cancer...as in top-top-top notch.

http://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/ask-an-expert-about-thyroid-cancer/



> Q. Pathology reports don't always come back as either malignant or benign. Sometimes the reading is "suspicious" or "atypical." Do you operate under these circumstances?
> 
> A. Most of the time. Those words are so doggone nonspecific. What "suspicious" means to one pathologist is different to another pathologist. Suspicious will generally buy you a surgery - it ends up being cancer somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of the time. Atypical means you probably need to have your slides read by someone who does a bunch more of this. It is my signal to have it reread by someone whose language I know. Part of it is also experience. What my guys would call cancer, other pathologists call suspicious. When my guys call it suspicious it is cancer 70 to 80 percent of the time.


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## ives6797 (Apr 23, 2013)

Maybe I should post it on the cancer survivors part of the board too?


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## ives6797 (Apr 23, 2013)

edit: oops! question was on here twice.


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## ives6797 (Apr 23, 2013)

Hmmm, I guess we will never know. I wondered if it was a stupid question, so glad to know it probably wasn't  lol


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## Octavia (Aug 1, 2011)

Not a stupid question at all....apparently one that we just don't know the answer to, though.


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## ives6797 (Apr 23, 2013)

I should've included the link I was looking at. Look at Table 45-2.

http://www.mhprofessional.com/downloads/products/0071663355/longo_hematology-ch45_p569-p577.pdf

It looks to me that 80-90% of follicular cells that are malignant are papillary. I originally assumed that follicular cells= follicular cancer, but this looks like it can be either.


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