European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

DIAGNOSTIC ACCURACY OF FINE NEEDLE ASPIRATION CYTOLOGY OF BREAST LUMP IN A TERTIARY TEACHING HOSPITAL

*Sunita Bamanikar, Megha Jha, Kushal Shah, Jay Sheth, Shirish Chandanwale and Shruti Vimal

ABSTRACT

Background: Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women after carcinoma cervix. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a suspicious lump in the breast is benign or malignant simply from clinical assessment. Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) is a relatively simple, rapid, reliable and economic procedure for the evaluation of lump lesions. Aims and Objectives: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of FNAC of palpable breast lesions done in 1507 patients over a period of ten years in a tertiary teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: Retrospective and prospective clinical data and cytology findings were obtained of all patients presenting with palpable breast lump during the period of August 2006 to September 2016. The FNAC results were correlated with histopathological findings and the data was analyzed to determine the diagnostic accuracy of FNAC. Results: FNAC was performed on 1507 cases and 523 cases had histopathological examination. Age 21 to 40 yrs was the most common age for presentation of breast lump. Fibroadenoma was the commonest benign lesion (44.3%) and Invasive Ductal carcinoma was commonest malignant lesion (7.8%) on cytology. Accuracy of detecting breast lesion cytologically was 97.51% over histopathology with sensitivity of 95.29% and specificity of 98.58%. Conclusion: FNAC is a highly effective, simple, minimally invasive tool for diagnosis of breast lesion and the results compare well with histopathology findings. Thus, preoperative categorization of breast lesions by FNAC is utmost important for proper management of patients with palpable breast lumps.

Keywords: Breast lesion, cyto-histology correlation, diagnostic accuracy.