A Prospective Study of Comparison Between Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) with Histopathological Diagnosis (HPE) in Neck Masses.

Background: FNAC is easy to perform, is minimally invasive and is economical. It has better patient compliance and the cytological diagnosis can be made before any definitive treatment is planned.

Materials And Methods: This prospective study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital of a medical college having 100 cases in study. The statistical analysis included sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value.

Result: On cytological examination, 94/100 were benign, 6 malignant or suspicious. On HPE, 92 were benign while 5 malignant from suspicious and malignant cases leaving 3 discordant cases. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value which was  71.4%, 98.9%,  83.3%,97.8% respectively in our case series.

Conclusion: FNAC is a safe, simple procedure. It gives a reliable pre-operative cytological diagnosis based on which surgical procedures or conservative management can be confidently executed. An attempt is made hereby to compare our results with worldwide documented literature. However pitfalls of this method should be kept in mind with careful observation and adequate clinical suspicion.