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The COVID‐19 pandemic has had a global impact on the environment and economy and has affected hospital administration and patient behaviour. Since human‐to‐human coronavirus transmission occurs via droplets and physical contact, health care professionals are particularly vulnerable to contracting COVID‐19. Many cytopathology laboratories updated their workflow, established new standard biosafety protocols, and built digital pathology or telescope platforms to mitigate these risks and deal with the shortage of health care personnel. The COVID‐19 pandemic also disrupted medical education—all indoor training events, including conferences, multidisciplinary tumour boards, seminars, and microscope inspections were postponed. As a result, many laboratories now use new web‐based applications and platforms to maintain educational programs and multidisciplinary tumour boards. To comply with government directives, health care facilities postponed non‐emergency surgeries, reduced the number of routine medical examinations, restricted visitor numbers, and scaled back cancer screening activities, resulting in a sharp decline in cytopathology diagnoses, cancer screening specimens, and molecular testing for cancer. Subsequent misses or delays in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer were not uncommon. This review aims to provide comprehensive summaries of the consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic for cytopathology, particularly in terms of cancer diagnosis, workload, human resources, and molecular testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Accurate preoperative identification of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is challenging due to a spectrum of cytomorphologic features. However, there is a scarcity of studies describing the cytomorphologic features as seen on fine-needle aspiration (FNA) smears prepared using different staining methods. (2) Methods: We performed a retrospective study on MTC cases with available FNA slides from 13 hospitals distributed across 8 Asia-Pacific countries. The differences in the constitutive cytomorphologic features of MTC with each cytopreparatory method were recorded. A comparative analysis of cytologic characteristics was carried out with appropriate statistical tests. (3) Results: Of a total of 167 MTC samples retrospectively recruited, 148 (88.6%) were interpreted as MTC/suspicious for MTC (S-MTC). The staining methods used were Papanicolaou, hematoxylin-eosin, and Romanowsky stains. Seven out of the eleven cytologic criteria can be readily recognized by all three cytopreparatory methods: high cellularity, cellular pleomorphism, plasmacytoid cells, round cells, dyshesive cells, salt-and-pepper chromatin, and binucleation or multinucleation. An accurate diagnosis was achieved in 125 (84.5%) of the 148 samples whose FNAs exhibited five or more atypical features. Conclusions: The present work is the first study on MTC to compare the morphological differences among the cytologic staining techniques. We investigated the constitutive features and the reliability of diagnostic parameters. A feasible scoring system based upon cytomorphologic data alone is proposed to achieve a high degree of diagnostic accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of adipocytes within thyroid glands is a rare finding seen in thyrolipoma, diffuse lipomatosis, or thyroid teratoma. Although some cases present with multinodular goiter or autoimmune thyroiditis, the exact cause has not yet been elucidated. Among reported cases, thyrolipomas mainly occur in females and usually present as a solitary lesion. However, a few reported cases had coexisting papillary thyroid carcinomas. Herein, we present a 51-year-old female with synchronous thyrolipoma (2.0 × 1.5 × 1.3 cm) and papillary thyroid carcinoma (0.7 × 0.6 × 0.6 cm) within the same thyroid lobe. She had diabetes mellitus and hypertension and complained of anterior neck enlargement and discomfort for three months. Thyroid sonography showed multiple hypoechoic nodules, one of which was heterogeneous and ill-defined. Fine needle aspirate cytology for the ill-defined nodule was suspicious for papillary thyroid carcinoma. She subsequently received radical thyroidectomy and neck lymph node dissection. Histopathologically, one thyrolipoma and one papillary thyroid carcinoma were identified in the right lobe of the thyroid gland without metastases of lymph nodes, while other nodules were multinodular goiter. Notably, thyrolipoma may not be simply an incidental finding but might coexist with thyroid carcinomas. A brief review of the pertinent literature of prior reports is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]