Rapid Access Thyroid Clinic

The Rapid Access Thyroid Clinic at Fiona Stanley Hospital facilitates streamlined and appropriate referral of patients with all thyroid nodules and urgent endocrine surgery.

Your general practitioner (GP) may arrange an appointment to find out the cause of the problems you are having with your thyroid, parathyroid or adrenal gland.

The clinic aims to see patients within 1 to 2 weeks of referral by their doctor. If you have been referred, you will be contacted by phone to arrange an appointment at the clinic.

If you have not heard from us after this time, please contact the clinic or your GP.

At your appointment

Please bring a list of current medications you are using and any scans or blood test results you may have had completed.

You may like to bring a friend or relative with you for company.

Please be aware that there may be several people present during your discussion with the doctor. They all have an important part to play in your treatment and care.

In the clinic the doctors will:

• take a full medical history
• perform a medical examination of your neck.

During your first appointment

You may have the following tests during your first appointment.

Flexible nasal endoscopic examination

This allows your doctor to look at your voice box. The camera is a small flexible tube passed through your nose to look further into your throat. This is a very simple, quick procedure. A local anaesthetic spray can also be used to make your nose and throat numb.

Ultrasound

This is a painless examination of your head and neck using sound waves performed by a sonographer or radiologist. A probe is held to the skin and images of the underlying structures are generated using sound waves.

Fine needle aspiration (FNA)

A fine needle is passed into the thyroid under ultrasound guidance and a specimen is withdrawn. The specimen is sent immediately to the laboratory to be analysed. Please inform the radiology doctors if you take any blood thinning medications.

About your results

For most patients the results will be available within 2 to 5 days.

For health professionals

Contact details

Phone the Rapid Access Thyroid Clinic on 6152 4052.

Location

Desk 1 – Outpatient Clinic, ground Floor of the main hospital building. See the Fiona Stanley Hospital map (PDF 1MB).