[Course studies in patients with cytologically inconspicuous, decreasingly accumulating struma nodes].

In 100 patients with inconspicuous findings of a thin-needle puncture of the thyroid gland after 2 years a clinical and cytological after-examination was performed. All test persons were primarily recommended a treatment with thyroid hormone. During the control in no case references to malignant process of the thyroid gland were the result, so that the puncture cytology also retrospectively showed a high exactness. Meanwhile 16 test persons had been strumectomized, in which cases the present histological findings always showed only regressive changes. The clinical after-examination confirmed former results so that also in decreasingly and not accumulating struma nodes a conservative approach is not promising a success. In 12 patients by application of hormones of the thyroid gland the struma had completely receded.