During a medical checkup, a nodule was found on my thyroid. I’m scheduled for a biopsy & ultrasound on June 24. I just received paperwork in the mail with a bunch of instructions that make me question what they’re gonna do.
It says I will be at the hospital for approximately 5 hours and I should plan to rest for 12 hours afterwards. I also need someone to drive me home after the procedure. What the heck for?
The doctor never mentioned going under general anesthesia. It sounds like that’s what they’re doing. Yes? No?
Isn’t an ultrasound for your thyroid basically the same as what they do to check on a developing fetus? If so, it’s not a grueling procedure, is it?
Also, I know they insert a thin needle into the neck to get some cell samples, which is what a biopsy is, but why you would need 12 hours to recover?
What am I missing here? Anyone ever have a thyroid biopsy? Am I in for a hellish day? Please tell me it won’t be so bad…please.
When I had a thyroid biopsy a million years ago, it was done in the doctor’s office. He just used a thin needle to draw out some cells. I don’t remember having an ultrasound at the same time, but it’s possible he used one to guide the needle.
The test I remember as being more impressive was the radioactive iodine uptake test and scan. For that one, I went into the imaging clinic (not the hospital, but some clinics are hospital-based) in the morning, drank a little cup of radioactive iodine, waited a few hours, and then had a scan. I was there most of the day, and I did have someone drive me home (but I don’t remember that they said I should; I just did).
If it’s any consolation, I don’t recall any of the tests I had as being all that traumatic, even though I’m terrified of needles. And even though I had to have my thyroid removed in the end, even that wasn’t really all that bad. Call the doctor tomorrow to set your mind at ease!
Talk to your doctor; I wonder if you got some generic biopsy instructions rather than ones specifically addressing the procedure you’re actually going to undergo. Most thyroid biopsies (even ultrasound-guided ones) are simple procedures that don’t require any significant sedation, and are over within a few minutes. No way are you going to be there for 5 hours for the actual procedure! (Can’t say about the wait time, though…)
And you shouldn’t need much of a recovery time at all. Your neck will be sore (for obvious reasons), and you may need to take some Tylenol for pain, but that should be about it. Sometimes there can be considerable bleeding into the biopsied tissue (the thyroid is quite vascular), so you may see quite a bit of swelling as well for a day or two; don’t let it alarm you, it will go away over time. Some people (especially needle-phobic ones) may feel a bit “woozy” immediately after the biopsy, which is probably why they want someone else to drive you home, but any such post-biopsy reactions should pass quickly.
It’s not a fun procedure, but by medical standards it’s one of the more bearable ones to undergo.
I had a needle biopsy on my thyroid a few years ago because they found five nodules on my thyroid. I received a topical anesthesia and basically was told to hold very, very still. Two of my nodules were located right between the carotid artery and jugular vein.
However, it was not a really awful procedure and it didn’t take long. It was definitely ultrasound guided.
I wouldn’t worry; it’ll be fine.
I’ve had three needle biopsies on my thyroid and I found them exhausting. It is painful and achy afterward and all I wanted to do was sleep. It’s not that it’s so terribly painful, it’s that it’s in a very vulnerable place.
I was rather offended by the doctor on the third time around telling me I could go back to work and my normal duties (different doctors each time). This might be true if you have the sort of job in front of a computer where you can just sort of phone it in, but not if your job involves concentration or the safety of others (like, say, giving people needle biopsies)
That was my experience anyway.
I just re-read the instructions again and it also mentions no food after midnight which sounds like an anesthesia thing, but the box for general anesthesia instructions was left unchecked so who knows.
Your replies seem to support my thinking that it’s not such a major procedure. Maybe it is a worst case scenario thing for people with bad reactions to needles.
I’m sure it’s a bit uncomfortable, but I’m guessing (knock on wood) it won’t be so bad. I’ll let you all know if I survive. Thanks for the reassuring replies.
I went through the needle nose biopsy. It came back clean. The doc still recommended that I have my thyroid removed as a precautionary measure. I insisted on keeping the side that was unaffected so now I have half left, and it’s producing enough that I don’t need Synthroid. .
My coworker also has a needle nose biopsy of a nodule. It came back as inconclusive. Her doc recommended she have a thyroidectomy, at which time they discovered cancer cells. (She’s fine now.)
Given that they removed both our thyroids anyway, why don’t they just skip the intermediate step? Ask your doc. It’s not a terrible procedure, but in retrospect it seemed unnecessary.
I was diagnosed with a nodular goiter in December, and had my 6-month follow-up ultrasound yesterday. If I don’t hear from them by noon tomorrow, I’m going to give them a call, because when I had the first ultrasound, they called me back with the diagnosis about 2 hours later.
The main nodule was discovered by my family practice doctor while I was having my “Girly Exam” 
and it felt like a butter bean underneath the skin - and just a couple weeks ago, I realized it was gone. My labs were normal too, so neither he nor the endocrinologist thought a biopsy was warranted.
Because if the patient only has a single nodule and the needle biopsy comes back benign, there’s no need to surgically remove it. And if the needle biopsy shows papillary thyroid carcinoma, the surgeon generally wants to remove the ENTIRE thyroid, not just the lobe with the known cancer (because papillary thyroid carcinoma can have multiple microscopic foci throughout the thyroid, so just taking out the obviously affected lobe may not be enough). So the biopsy results can greatly influence treatment decisions.
I had a needle biopsy done on my thyroid. It was ultrasound-guided and hurt, but not unbearably. I didn’t need to fast or have a driver. My doctor kept an eye (and her hands) on my nodules for years before we did the biopsies. I eventually had a totally thyroidectomy because they’d grown to the point where it was making swallowing difficult (an inch thick on one side, 3/4" on the other). My biopsy was clean, but my sister , nephew and aunt had thyroid cancer.
StG
Were they downwind of weapons tests?
This sounds likely. Along similar lines, when I had my thyroid biopsy done, the doctor had a generic biopsy prescription form, with a list of boxes to check for different body parts. True story: I was a little nervous going into the test, because the doctor had made the “X” on the form so large that it went through both “Thyroid” and “Trans-Rectal Prostate” (a procedure where they poke a spring-loaded needle gun up your pooper and fire). I contemplated writing “wrong end” on my rear with a marker, but I couldn’t reach around far enough.
My test ended up being only minor discomfort, and it came back negative.
Thyroid fine needle aspirates are commonly done under ultrasound guidance, especially for nodules that are nonpalpable (and are discovered during imaging done for other reasons).
With proper local anesthesia, this is a minimally painful procedure (based on reactions from patients who I’ve personally done FNAs on, and from witnessing many other such procedures), and while having you sit quietly for a short time afterward to make sure there’s no bleeding or other symptoms is a good idea, I can’t see why you’d have to have someone drive you home, or take off work (though if you’re looking for a full day off, this is as good an excuse as any).
My personal take based on experience reading thyroid biopsies as a pathologist is that the vast majority of these come back negative (i.e. benign goitrous nodules), a minority are indeterminate/atypical and a small minority are suspicious/positive for cancer. The advent of common imaging for head/neck complaints turns up a lot of benign nodules that would never have caused any problems, except now docs feel obligated to investigate all of them, at least the ones 1 cm or greater in size, and quite a bit of unnecessary surgery results (though less than in the past, when the only recognized treatment of palpable nodules was thyroid removal).
More personal observation: if I had a biopsy-proven small papillary carcinoma in one thyroid lobe, I’d demand very good evidence/explanation from the ENT doc before consenting to having the other (unaffected) thyroid lobe removed and having to go on thyroid replacement drugs for life.
Moved from MPSIMS to IMHO, home of medical threads.
Don’t be afraid to ask your doctor for details about any procedure. A good doctor will usually be happy to explain what you should expect, exactly why the test is being done, etc., but may not offer up any information without your questions, assuming that you already know or don’t want to know.