Thursday, May 24, 2012

clearly ambiguous

I received the ultrasound report in the mail today. Unfortunately, I was right to doubt the receptionist's cheerful "It's completely normal!" summary... but I don't think I'm headed for surgery, either. (whew!)

The report itself is a paragon of brevity. However, the concision with which the radiologist expressed his findings leads to some confusion on my part. For example, nearly all of the radiological literature (I'm great at reading this stuff, since ultrasound is one of the main tools for diagnosing thyroid cancer issues) clearly distinguishes between functional cysts and others. So the finding of a "small complex cyst with thickened wall and mural nodularity" is not entirely consistent with the impression, "Small complex cyst of the right ovary... likely reflects a small functional cyst".

That was the first impression, concluding with, "consider followup as indicated."

The second impression was that there were small follicles on the left ovary, with interval resolution of a left-sided ovarian cyst. So there was something going on there at some point, but what "interval" are we talking about here, the one since the last u/s report (November 2010)? Who knows.

At this point, I'll wait for my doctor to get back to his office (Tuesday), and call and ask how they want to follow up on this. I'm thinking -- hoping -- all he'll say is I need to go for another ultrasound in a bit. I can handle that.

In the meantime, the large amount of web pages discussing ovarian cysts are consistent in mentioning the very, very low occurrences of malignancy, so that's encouraging, too, even though thickened walls and mural nodules are flags that this particular cyst should be monitored.

No comments: