Cytologic grading of aggressive and non-aggressive variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma

Fine-needle aspiration cytologic smear of 30 cases of papillary thyroid carcinoma was examined in a trial to distinguish preoperatively between the usual non-aggressive [classic, follicular and mixed papillary and follicular variants] and the aggressive [tall- cell, columnar cell and sclerosing diffuse] variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma. The cases were classified according to a grading system based on the evaluation of four cytologic parameters into cell size, number of nuclear pseudoinclusions, nuclear pleomorphism and type of chromatin. A significant association between the cytologic classes and the histologic features of the cases was found. All cytologic grade I cases corresponded to the non-aggressive histologic variants, whereas, all cytologic grade III cases showed features of the aggressive variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma at the histologic level

Correlative study of aspiration cytology, imprint cytology and tru-cut needle biopsy for diagnosis of some different lesions of lymph nodes

Fifty patients with superficial lymphadenopathy were studied cytologically and histopatho logically. Pre-operative fine needle aspiration cytology [FNAC] specimens, core cutting needle biopsies and intraoperative imprint cytology were compared to histopathological results of histological material obtained by open surgical biopsy. In malignant lymphomas, FNAC yielded 80.9% correct diagnosis in comparison to the histopathological diagnosis, while imprint cytology and tru-cut needle biopsy yielded 95.2% and 47.6% respectively. In benign lesions of lymph nodes FNAC results were 82.35% correct diagnosis while the imprint cytology and tru-cut needle biopsy results were 88.2% and 58.8% respectively. On the other hand, metastatic lymph nodes were 100% correct diagnosis for both FNAC and imprint cytology method while it was 75% correct diagnosis using the tru-cut needle biopsy