Subclinical Thyroid Disease: Questions and Recommendations
Subclinical thyroid disease is, by its very nature, a laboratory diagnosis. Patients with subclinical disease have few or no definitive clinical signs or symptoms of thyroid dysfunction. Thus, it is critically important that the normal reference range for TSH be standardized and that laboratories engage in appropriate quality control procedures to ensure that the results they report are accurate and reproducible.10,11 The TSH method used should have a functional sensitivity of at least 0.02 mIU/L and the functional sensitivity should be independently established by each laboratory.