Background & Objective : Palpable thyroid nodules are found in almost 5% of the adults. Regarding the high prevalence of this condition, recognizing and evaluating them are important for physicians. Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) is the first easy and cost-effective way for recognizing pathologic nature of the nods. The present research was an attempt to investigate the epidemiology and evaluate the pathological findings among patients using FNA.

  Methods : This is a descriptive study conducted on all 145(113 female and 32 male) patients referring to the endocrinology clinic of Ardabil in the period between October 1999 to October 2002. The data were collected using a questionnaire, the physical examination of the patients, noting down the clinical finding, doing FNA and its report presented by a pathologist. The data were then analyzed with descriptive statistics and frequency tables using SPSS software.

  Results : Most of the patients (36.5%) were 30-40 years old. FNA of 115 patients (79.4%) was reported as benign and that of 6 patients (4.1%) was malignant, 16 patients (11%) had a doubtful FNA, and in 8 patients (5.5%) the sample was not enough. Among patients with benign FNA, 102 cases (70.6%) had nodular goiter, 8 cases (5.5%) had colloid cyst, 3 cases (2%) had follicular adenoma and 2 cases (1.3%) had thyroiditis. Among patients with malignant FNA 1 case (0.7%) had follicular carcinoma and 5 cases (3.4%) had papillary carcinoma.

  Conclusions : The results indicated that most of the malignant lesion is papillary carcinoma, which has a lower prevalence compared to similar studies. Regarding the higher prevalence of thyroid carcinoma in middle ages it seems necessary to investigate the thyroid nodules in this age- group.