Chooi JE, Ravindiran A, Balasubramanian SP, et al. - This study’s findings demonstrate that the mode of detection should not influence the evaluation and management of thyroid nodules.

• Researchers included 18 observational studies published between 1998 and 2020 for analysis; four studies reported on risk, nine on prognosis, and five studies reported on both risk and prognosis.

• The odds of incidental detection in cancer and benign groups ranged from 0.16 to 0.5 and 0.06 to 0.38, respectively (odds ratio [OR] = 0.64–2.86) in case-control studies (n = 6) when comparing the incidental and non-incidental groups in the risk study; the risk of malignancy for thyroid nodules ranged from 4% to 23.5% in the incidental and 3.8% to 28.7% in the non-incidental groups (relative risk = 0.13–6.27) in the cohort studies (n = 3).

• In this meta-analysis of the eligible case-control studies (n = 3), results demonstrated a nonsignificant summated OR of 1.04 (95% confidence interval = 0.63–1.70; p = .88). The prognosis study compared five direct and thirteen indirect markers of prognosis between the incidental and non-incidental groups. According to the findings, a meta-analysis was not possible but incidentally detected thyroid cancer had better progression-free and overall survival.