A Prospective Study of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of Intraoral Lesions

Abstract

Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is an important diagnostic tool for swellings in the thyroid, salivary gland, breast lump and enlarged lymph nodes. Very few studies have been done to explore the potential of FNAC in the diagnoses of intraoral lesions. Hence the present study was done to find out the efficacy of FNAC in the diagnosis of intraoral lesions. AIMS/OBJECTIVES: To determine the efficacy of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology in the diagnosis of intraoral lesions. MATERIALS & METHODS:A prospective study on 88 cases presented with intraoral lesions was done from August 2010 to July 2012. Cases of intraoral Cases having both FNACs along with biopsy correlation were included. OBSERVATIONS/RESULTS: The age group ranged from 12-83 years with male: female ratio of 1.6:1. The most common sites of aspiration were tongue in 28 cases, followed by buccal mucosa in 24 and other sites 42 cases. The lesions reported on FNAC were malignant tumors in 44(50%), benign lesions 39 (44.31%) and suspicious for malignancy 5(5.69%) cases. False negative and false positive were 6 and 2 cases respectively. Squamous cell carcinoma was the common malignant tumor. Overall sensitivity of 88%, specificity 95.6% and diagnostic accuracy of 91.6% was obtained in our study. CONCLUSION: We conclude that FNAC is one of the important diagnostic tool in the diagnosis of intraoral lesions. The results of our study suggest, it should be considered as first line of investigation, especially in clinically suspected malignant tumors.