[Evaluation of the results of fine-needle aspiration liver biopsies and the complications in 2528 cases].

Objective: To study the value of fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) in diagnosing primary liver cancer (PLC) and its major complications.

Methods: From June 1, 1985 to May 31, 2005, 2528 patients who were presented with suspected PLC underwent ultrasound-guided FNAB in the Cancer Hospital of Fudan University. The results were retrospectively reviewed.

Results: Of those 2528 cases, there was malignancy in 2061 patients (81.53%), of which 1704 were diagnosed as primary liver neoplasms; 41 were diagnosed as metastatic carcinoma, and 316 were not further classified as primary or metastatic. No malignancy was found in 431 cases (17.05%). In 36 cases (1.42%), suspicious malignancy or anaplasia was suggested. Follow-up results showed that all the 2061 positive cases were verified to be malignant and there were no false positive cases. 163 of the 431 negative cases were verified to be malignant in the follow-ups, of which 136 cases were PLC; 28 of the 36 suspicious malignancy or anaplasia were proven to be malignant (all were PLC). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and overall accuracy of our FNAB for diagnosing liver malignancy were 91.52%, 100.00%, 100.00%, 59.10% and 92.44%, respectively, and 81.01% cases were diagnosed by FNAB in all the 2096 cases with PLC. Cytological examinations of the smears obtained by FNAB correctly distinguished primary and secondary malignancy in 77.49% of the patients. After FNAB, 11 patients (0.44%) had intraperitoneal hemorrhages and 5 cases (0.20%) had needle tract implantation metastases.

Conclusions: FNAB is important and effective for determining the malignancy potential of liver tumors, especially for PLC. Complications related to FNA were rather rare, therefore, this technique may be easily applied to clinical practice.