Utility of Aspiration Cytology in the Evaluation of Oral and Maxillofacial Lesions

Abstract

Background: Fineneedle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as a cheap diagnostic technique has helped reduce diagnostic turnaround time of pathological entities from different body sites. It is thus also important to evaluate its utility in the diagnosis of maxillofacial lesions in view of heterogeneity of morphological patterns noted for this site. Methodology: Cytology and corresponding histology reports for lesions from patients where both were available were compared for concordance between specific cytological diagnosis and final histological diagnosis. From these, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and accuracy of FNAC were calculated. Result: Cytological diagnosis of maxillofacial lesions demonstrated a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and accuracy of 100%, 95.7%, 97% and 98.2%, respectively. The concordance of specific cytological diagnosis with final histological diagnosis was 85.5%. Conclusion: This study concludes that FNAC is a cheap and diagnostically reliable technique for evaluation of maxillofacial lesions in a resource poor setting.