Could be helpful in avoiding surgery in some cases:

Between 60 and 80 percent of the time, the nodule in the removed thyroid turns out to be benign. “You have unnecessarily put a patient through surgery,” says Kishore Lakshman, director of a community thyroid care center in Fall River, Massachusetts. This puts patients at risk for complications such as infection, and creates dependence on hormone therapy. Since 2011, Lakshman has been using Veracyte’s gene test to assess the risk of cancer in patients whose initial thyroid screen was inconclusive. “When I found out that there was a very efficient way of knowing the benign potential of a nodule without exposing a patient to surgery, I was quick to jump on it,” says Lakshman.