Interventional head and neck ultrasound – the Newcastle upon Tyne perspective

There are few sub-specialities in radiology where diagnostic and interventional work are so inextricably linked as head and neck ultrasound, where the operator has fine needle aspiration (FNA) and/or core biopsy at their disposal and tissue sampling offers a valuable extension of the diagnostic scan.

This hasn’t always been the case. Around a decade ago in my department (I suspect many other sites have a similar experience) we had a single head and neck specialist radiologist who did a half session a week of ultrasound, where he performed one or two FNAs and a few single ‘complex’ diagnostic scans. All other neck imaging was performed by general sonographers and radiologists with reports that were not much more than “multinodular thyroid noted,” or similar. Blind, free-hand FNAs by surgeons and excision biopsies were common practice.

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