Cytological study of palpable breast lumps with their histological correlation in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Breast lump have varied pathology and different techniques are available to diagnose it. But fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is highly accurate, rapid, and reliable tool for diagnosing breast lump. It helps the clinician to plan correct management. Aim: Aim of this study was to evaluate role of FNAC in diagnosis of palpable breast lesions in term of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and to compare cytopathological findings of breast lesions with histopathology wherever possible. Materials and methods: This study was carried out on 234 patients, all presented with breast lump in pathology Department, GMERS medical college, Valsad over a period of January 2015 to May 2017. Out of 234 patients 2 were male. Cytological diagnoses were correlated with histopathological findings. Results: Cytopathologically lesions were categorized as non-neoplastic 16(6.83%), benign 122(52.13%), malignant 30(31.19%) suspicious 12(5.12%) and unsatisfactory aspirates 11(4.70%). Of these 234 cases 69(29.48%) cases were available for histopathological examination, of which 39 benign cases and 24 malignant cases were similarly diagnosed on histopathology. 5 suspicious cases and 1 unsatisfactory aspirate on FNAC were turned out to be malignant on histopathology. So sensitivity was 80%, specificity 100%, positive predictive value 100%, negative predictive value 86.6% and diagnostic accuracy 91.30%. Conclusion: FNAC is a simple and reliable method for diagnosis of breast lump with quite accuracy and avoiding unnecessary surgery. The results of FNAC show high degree of correlation with histopathology reports and that proves that the procedure has high sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy.