Utility of fine needle aspiration cytology in diagnosing soft tissue tumors- experience in our institution

Introduction: Soft tissue tumours are a heterogeneous group of lesions arising from non-epithelial extraskeletal tissue of the body. Benign out number malignant tumors by being 10 times more commoner in a hospital population. The use of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in the evaluation of soft tissues tumour is debatable because of their extremely varied morphology. Aims: 1. To evaluate role of FNAC as a routine procedure in diagnosing soft tissue tumors. 2.To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and correlation of cytomorphological features with histomorphology. Materials and Method: This is a retrospective study of cytological analysis of FNAC performed on soft tissue tumors reporting to SDMCMS&H, Dharwad over a period of five years. Histomorphological features of the biopsies performed were evaluated and correlated with FNA findings. Relevant clinical details were obtained from the patients records. Results: Of 450 cases of soft tissue tumors studied 412(91.5%) were benign, 36(8.1%) malignant and 2(0.4%) inconclusive. Among benign tumors Lipoma and its variants constituted the major group (83%), and Pleomorphic sarcoma (19.5%) in malignant cases. Cytohistomorphological correlation was 100% concordant in malignant cases and 2 cases which were reported as benign turned out to be malignant on biopsy. Conclusion: FNAC a safe, cost effective diagnostic procedure provides fairly accurate correlation with the histomorphology in soft tissue tumors.