ABSTRACT
Introduction: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancerdeaths among women worldwide. Breast cancer clinicallypresents as breast lump.Fine needle aspiration cytology(FNAC) and breast ultrasound (sonomammography) is pivotalin characterization of a breast lump as benign and malignantlesion. There is a need to study radiological and cytologicalcorrelation of breast lesions with histopathological findings toevaluate the diagnostic accuracy of sonomammography andFNAC.Material and Methods: A prospective, quantitativeand descriptive study was conducted in the departmentof Radiology, Father Muller Medical College Hospital,Mangalore. Patients who were evaluated for suspicious breastlump with a breast ultrasound, FNAC and biopsy from January2017 to December 2018 were included in the study.Results: In this study, diagnostic accuracy for breast FNAC(98.7%) was found to be better than that of sonomammography(92.5%). Fine needle aspiration cytology of breast lump playsan important role when it is difficult to determine the nature ofbreast lump by clinical and radiological examination. In thisstudy breast FNAC was found to have sensitivity of 98.4% andspecificity of 95.7%. Sonomammography had a sensitivity of90.6%and specificity of 97.8.Conclusion: Present study confirms the higher combinedsensitivity, specificity and accuracy for ultrasonography andfine needle aspiration cytology in categorisation of breast lumpas benign and malignant. USG is better indetection of benignlesions whereas cytology is better in case of malignancies.The triple assessment is an accurate, simple and cost-effectivemethod for the evaluation of breast cancer and can be appliedat our centre as a safe alternative for open biopsy when itis concordant and open biopsy must be reserved only fordiscordant results. This will subsequently reduce the numberofbreast biopsies significantly