What constitutes an adequate smear in fine-needle aspiration cytology of the breast?

Role of Cytological Grading in Breast Cancer Prognosis and its Histo-pathological Correlation

“…On performing Robinson's cytological grading, on all 44 cases, and adding up the parameters, we found that majority of the examined smears , 27 out of 44 , fell under cytological grade II ( 61.4%), followed by 18.2% of cytological grade I cases ( 8 out of 44 ) and 20.4% cytological grade III cases ( 9 out of 44 cases ).- Table No 1. The optimal number of cell clusters necessary to define an adequate FNA of a palpable breast mass is not clear, although many authors have used six as the definitive number of epithelial cell clusters (7) . A study by Sinha et al (8) shows that a better concordance between grading systems may be achieved by examining 8 cellclusters.…”

Cytokeratin-positive Cells in the Bone Marrow of Breast Cancer Patients and Noncancer Donors

“…For example, fine-needle aspiration of a primary breast cancer will typically yield thousands of candidate cells. Obtaining sufficient clinical material for confident interpretation of needle aspiration cytology is a necessary step in the evaluation of primary tumors of the breast 19. A minimum threshold number of cells may need to be established as criteria for successful interpretation of bone marrow aspirations.…”

The role of laboratory processing in determining diagnostic conclusiveness of breast fine needle aspirations: conventional smearing versus a monolayer preparation

“…These provide no information, delay diagnostic investigation, and require further investigations, such as core needle biopsies, to provide a conclusive diagnosis 18 19 20. Low-grade tumours and increased medicolegal claims are acknowledged as causes of the increased reporting of indeterminate diagnoses 11.…”