We thank Drs. Baloch and LiVolsi for their comments and questions. The issue of intraepithelial neutrophils in papillary carcinoma, as investigated by Peters et al. was not originally addressed in our paper. The study by Peters et al. 1 reported 3 cases of aggressive papillary thyroid carcinoma with fine-needle aspiration (FNA) material which revealed ''numerous leukocytes-predominately neutrophils-within the cytoplasm of the tumor cells in absence of necrosis.'' Two of the 3 cases were proven to be the tall-cell variant of papillary carcinoma. We have had the opportunity to search for this feature in our study group. Interestingly, we found intraepithelial neutrophils in 10 of 14 cases of high-grade papillary carcinoma, in contrast to only one of 18 cases of low-grade papillary carcinoma. This feature had a sensitivity of 71%, specificity of 94%, positive predictive value of 91%, and negative predictive value of 81% for identifying highgrade papillary carcinomas. Of the high-grade papillary carcinomas, 3 of 6 tall-cell variants (TCV), 0 of 1 diffuse sclerosing variant (DSV), and 7 of 7 other poorly differentiated papillary carcinomas (PDPC) demonstrated this feature. Therefore, the specificity for identifying cases of TCV was not particularly high. Now for definitions. The current classification of thyroid papillary carcinoma by variants according to the third series Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicle, Tumors of the Thyroid Gland, 2 includes papillary carcinoma, not otherwise specified, papillary microcarcinoma, encapsulated papillary carcinoma, follicular variant papillary carcinoma, solid/ trabecular variant papillary carcinoma, diffuse sclerosing variant papillary carcinoma, tall-cell variant papillary carcinoma, and columnar-cell carcinoma. One may also divide papillary carcinoma by grade. It is acknowledged that the majority of thyroid papillary carcinomas do not exhibit significant nuclear pleomorphism, hyperchromasia, mitotic activity, and necrosis. The ones which do are classified as ''high-grade'' or ''poorly differentiated papillary carcinoma.'' While many of the ''poorly differentiated papillary carcinomas'' correspond to cases of the tall-cell variant, there are thyroid papillary carcinomas with significant degrees of nuclear pleomorphism, hyperchromasia, and mitotic activity which do not fulfill the criteria for the tall-cell variant. While there is agreement with the appear-