ABSTRACT
Lymphadenopathy is an age old affliction of mankind. It is one of the very common presentations in clinical practice. The present study was carried out to evaluate the merits and demerits of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as a diagnostic procedure in childhood lymphadenopathy in comparison to open surgical biopsy. Altogether 70 children with lymphadenopathy in the age group of up to 12 years were selected for FNAC. Only 38 could be motivated for open surgical biopsy. Out of 38 cases, FNAC was consistent with histopathology in 33 cases, thus giving a diagnostic accuracy or percentage of agreement-86.8%. The diagnostic accuracy of FNAC, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values of FNAC in the present study were fairly high ranging from 80%-100%. FNAC gave false positive diagnosis in 13.2% cases and false negative result in 13.2% cases.