Fine-needle Aspiration (FNA) Cytologic Diagnosis of Breast Lesions

Abstract

Background: Surgical excision breast biopsy procedures have proved to be costly, cosmetically disfiguring to the breast, and psychologically traumatic to patients. Only 15%-30% of the lesions subjected to biopsy are malignant; the rest are benign or atypical, It is desirable to decrease the number of surgical biopsies, particularly in cases of benign breast disease, provided the detection rate of cancer remains unaffected.Aims: To study the accuracy of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) cytological diagnosis of breast lesions Patients and Methods: FNA cytological examination was performed in 96 breast lesions. The centre area of the lesions was located and accurate placement of the fine-needle, followed by aspiration. A successful aspirates yielded sufficient cytological materials adequate for diagnosis.Results: The cytological examination was considered unsatisfactory in 6 cases (6.25%) of the 96 specimens due to insufficient material. The cytological diagnosis was benign in 55 cases (57.29%), atypical in 9 cases (9.3%), suspicious for malignancy in 6 cases (6.25%), and malignant in 20 cases (20.8%).All cases diagnosed as suspicious or malignant and 3 of 55 cases diagnosed as benign at cytological examination proved to be malignant at histological examination.Conclusions: It is concluded that fine-needle aspiration cytology of the breast lesions is safe, inexpensive, minimally invasive, and highly accurate in the diagnosis of breast disease. The procedure has a central role in the management of breast lesions and should be used as the initial diagnostic test. However, false negative do occur mainly through sampling error, and invasive cancer cannot distinguish from in situ disease