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World J Biol Chem. Feb 26, 2017; 8(1): 81-85
Published online Feb 26, 2017. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v8.i1.81
Use of thyroglobulin as a tumour marker
Buddhike Sri Harsha Indrasena
Buddhike Sri Harsha Indrasena, Consultant General and Endocrine Surgeon, Kandy General Hospital (Teaching), Kandy 20000, Sri Lanka
Author contributions: Indrasena BSH performed the whole of the writing.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Buddhike Sri Harsha Indrasena, MBBS (Hons), MS (Surgery), MSc (Statistics), MRCS(Ed), Consultant General and Endocrine Surgeon, Kandy General Hospital (Teaching), William Gopallawa Mawatha, Kandy 20000, Sri Lanka. indrasenaharsha@gmail.com
Telephone: +94-718-713457 Fax: +94-812-233343
Received: September 28, 2016
Peer-review started: October 7, 2016
First decision: November 10, 2016
Revised: December 28, 2016
Accepted: January 11, 2017
Article in press: January 14, 2017
Published online: February 26, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Although serum thyroglobulin (TG) is widely used as a tool to detect recurrence of thyroid cancer, it is widely held that preoperative TG measurement is unnecessary. It is true that preoperative TG level is hardly of much diagnostic value, but without a preoperative TG report, it is not possible to safely utilize serial serum TG subsequently as a monitoring tool. Routine measurement of serum TG before surgery is, therefore, recommended.