Fine‐needle aspiration cytology: Its origin, development, and present status with special reference to a developing country, India

Abstract

Fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) was performed on a large scale at Memorial Hospital, New York, during the 1930s, but during the ensuing years, it did not gain much encouragement in United States. The technique had a resurgence in Scandinavia during the 1950s and 1960s, where it flourished before spreading to other parts of the world. It had also a revival in the United States, which contributed enormously to this tool in each and every aspect. The status of FNA during 1966-2002 was assessed through review of MEDLINE search data on FNA and its correlation with World Bank website data on classification of countries. A total of 849 journals published 5,609 articles on FNA over a period of 37 years. Both the number of publishing journals and the number of published articles on FNA were low during the 1960s (3.5 +/- 0.58 and 4.0 +/- 0.82, respectively) and 1970s (20.3 +/- 14.72 and 25.0 +/- 20.54, respectively), but their number increased sharply from the 1980s onward (78.2 +/- 25.65 and 147.2 +/- 66.89, respectively, during the 1980s, 126.2 +/- 11.94 and 301.4 +/- 35.99, respectively, during the 1990s, and 113.3 +/- 36.46 and 287.3 +/- 85.93, respectively, during the 2000s). The difference between the decades of 1960s-2000s, with respect to the number of publishing journals and published articles, was highly significant (P < 0.0001). Only 90 (10.6%) of the journals were from the arena of pathology and its branches. The remaining journals belonged to various other disciplines of medicine; a small fraction were even from the veterinary sciences. Ten journals, including three in the field of cytopathology, published 2,448 (43.6%) of the total articles on FNA. During 1987-2002, 46 (29.7%) of the 155 developing nations published articles on FNA, whereas 28 (52.8%) of the developed (high-income economies) countries did so, the difference being highly significant (P = 0.0044). The total number of publications from high-income economies was 3,124 (195.3 per year), as opposed to 772 (48.3 per year) from the developing world. The number of articles published from the developing nations (16.8 +/- 52.21) was significantly lower as compared with that from the high-income economies (111.6 +/- 242.03) (P = 0.005). Except for infectious diseases, the high-income economies had a definite edge over the developing nations in the absolute number of publications from each and every site/organ. However, when the frequency of publications on various organs/sites was compared between the two groups, it was found that the number of articles from high-income economies was significantly higher with respect to breast diseases (P < 0.001) and pancreatic lesions (P = 0.0158), whereas the developing nations published more frequently on small round cell tumors (excluding exclusive reports on lymphoma) and infectious diseases (P < 0.001). In India, FNAC was first introduced during the early 1970s and spread to different parts through formal teaching under the postgraduate curriculum in pathology and by conducting workshops and continuing medi...

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