Evaluation of diagnostic accuracy of fine needle aspiration cytology in different masses

ABSTRACT

Pre-operative fine needle aspiration is a reliable widely used method for obtaining a rapid diagnosis which can direct further planning of therapy. The procedure enables the clinician to obtain a definitive diagnosis in a high percentage of patients with minimal cost or expenditure of time -and is useful in delineating patients with metastatic disease or primary bone neoplasm such as multiple myeloma or lymphoma to avoid unnecessary surgery. In the present work, a comparative study was carried out on 137 patients with superficially accessible masses to access the accuracy of cytodiagnosis. Fine needle aspiration proved to have a valuable role even in undiagnosed cases as it could differentiate between benign and malignant tumors. Cytologically undiagnosed breast cases were attributed to the presence of dense sclerotic stroma which yielded unsatisfactory smears, the same explanation for one of the cases of thyroid swelling was suspected, while the other case which was suspicious is explained by the similar features of benign and malignant well differentiated follicular tumors. 2 out of 11 cases of salivary glands were misclassified with regard to the type of malignancy. The accuracy rate was 100% in cases with osseous tumors, lymphadenopathy, subcutaneous soft tissue masses as well as liver nodules