Fine needle aspiration cytology in the diagnosis of lymph nodes: Correlation with histopathological diagnosis

Abstract

Objective: Lymph node fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is usually the first step in the evaluation of an enlarged lymph node. It is a rapid, minimally invasive, and less expensive procedure than histopathological examination. The aim of this study was to analyze the diagnostic adequacy of lymph node FNAC compared with histopathological diagnosis. Methods: A total of 171 lymph node FNAC results performed between 2016 and 2017 were reviewed for inclusion in this study. In all, the FNAC results of 41 cases sampled with Tru-Cut (Merit Medical Systems, Inc., South Jordan, UT, USA) and/or excisional biopsy were compared with the histopathological findings. Results: The FNAC diagnosis of 13 benign cases (13/13), 3 reported as atypia of undeter-mined significance (3/4), 8 that were suspected malignancy (8/9), and 13 malignant cases (13/13) were well correlated with the final histopathological diagnoses. The overall diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy were found to be 95.4%, 94.1%, 95.4%, 94.1%, and 94.9% respectively. The false negative rate was 2.4% and the false positive rate was 2.4%. Conclusion: FNAC of lymph nodes is a highly sensitive and specific method to diagnose lymph node pathologies. It is a reliable diagnostic tool in the evaluation of an enlarged lymph node.