Assessing the accuracy of thyroid nodule risk-stratification tools in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

Cohort studyJournal of the Endocrine Society· May 2026

Assessing the accuracy of thyroid nodule risk-stratification tools in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

Carine Tamamian, Clifford Jiajun He, Charles Choe, Theresa Guo

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Head & Neck & Endocrine PathologyCohort studyDiagnosisQ2IF 3.1

Hispanic patients had higher odds of malignant thyroid nodules than non-Hispanic patients.

Assessing the accuracy of thyroid nodule risk-stratification tools in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

Carine Tamamian … Theresa Guo

Journal of the Endocrine Society · May 2026

Background

Ultrasound risk categories (thyroid imaging, reporting, and data systems, TI-RADS), fine-needle aspiration cytology (Bethesda), and molecular classifiers guide thyroid nodule management.

Purpose

In this study, we compared the predictive performance of these tools in Hispanic vs non-Hispanic patients using surgical pathology as the gold standard.

Methods

We performed a retrospective study of adult patients (≥18 years) evaluated for thyroid nodules from January 2023 to June 2024 at a tertiary academic medical center.

n = 308 patients

Results

hispanic patients had more than double the odds of malignancy

OR by subgroup · 95% CI

More results

Mean age was 54.3 ± 15.4 years in Hispanic patients and 58.8 ± 16.1 years in non-Hispanic patients ( P = .02).

TI-RADS and Bethesda distributions were similar by ethnicity.

Among TI-RADS4 nodules undergoing surgery, malignancy risk was higher in Hispanic patients (32.7% vs 12.0%; odds ratio [OR] 3.57, 95% CI 1.63-7.78; P = .001).

More results

Among Bethesda III/IV nodules with suspicious molecular results, malignancy was higher in Hispanic patients (78.6% vs 34.8%; adjusted OR 8.72, 95% CI 1.35-96.0; P = .022).

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Conclusion · 1 of 2

Despite similar use of diagnostic tools, Hispanic patients had higher malignancy rates overall and within select diagnostic strata.

Conclusion · 2 of 2

These findings suggest variation in risk estimate performance across populations and support multicenter validation in diverse cohorts.

Assessing the accuracy of thyroid nodule risk-stratification tools in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

Assessing the accuracy of thyroid nodule risk-stratification tools in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

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