Bartolazzi A et al. - Our findings show that if the option of surgery was based theoretically on galectin-3 expression alone, only 134 thyroid operations would have been done in 465 patients; therefore a large proportion (71%) of unnecessary thyroid surgical procedures could be avoided, although a number of galectin-3-negative cancers could be potentially missed. The galectin-3 test proposed here does not replace conventional FNA cytology, but represents a complementary diagnostic method for those follicular nodules that remain indeterminate.