ABSTRACT
This study was conducted on 50 women with benign looking ovarian cysts as detected by clinical and ultrasonographic examination. Every woman was subjected to full clinical examination trans-abdominal pelvic ultrasound scanning. Selected benign looking ovarian cysts by ultrasound were submitted to fine needle aspiration under guidance of ultrasound. The aspirated fluid was examined cytologically and histopathological examination was done for all cases after laparotomy and surgical managements. Cytological and histopathological results were as follows: Serous cystadenoma: 19 cases diagnosed cytologically and 30 cases histopathological. Mucinous cyst-adenoma: 8 cases diagnosed cytologically and 4 cases by histopathology. Benign cystic teratoma [dermoid cyst]: 4 cases diagnosed by both cytology and histopathology after laparotomy. Chocolate cyst: only one case diagnosed cytologically and confirmed histologically. Benign unclassified cysts: 17 cases diagnosed cytologically to be benign ovarian cysts and were found histologically to be, 13 cases of serous cystadenoma, two cases of mucinous cystadenoma and two cases of granulosa lutein cyst. One case of clear cell cystic ovarian tumour was detected histologically, but cytologically it was considered as serous cystadenoma. Papillary serous cystadenoma, one case was diagnosed cytologically and confirmed by histopathological examination. From the above results, acceptable correlation between cytological and histological results was found in cases of malignant, benign cystic teratoma, chocolate cysts and to some extent in cases of mucinous cystadenoma. More discrepancy was found as regards serous cystadenoma as most of the cytologically not classifiable cases were found to belong to this category