RESUMO
Diagnosis of Salivary gland tumours is challenging, because of wide variation in differentiation and overlapping morphological features. Sometimes, the difficulty encountered in distinguishing between pleomorphic adenoma, adenoid cystic carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. The objective is to study the application of AgNOR pattern in differentiating benign and malignant tumours of the salivary glands on Fine needle aspirates and their correlation with histopathology. Material and method: Cytological material was obtained by FNAC from forty three patients of salivary gland tumours. MGG and Pap stained smears were prepared for cytological interpretation. Histopathological study was done on routine formalin fixed and Haematoxylin & Eosin stained sections. Smears and sections were stained with Silver colloid stain for study of AgNOR counting. Results: AgNOR in benign tumours were small, round, uniform and less in number (1.02-1.97) while in malignant tumours they were very large, irregular, haphazardly distributed with high counts (1.23-16). Conclusion: Present study shows that count as well as morphology of AgNOR dots was helpful in differentiating between benign and malignant tumours and their grading of malignancy .