Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic yield of fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy and cytological examination of the aspirate of variety of oral and pharyngeal lesions.
Patients & Methods: The study included 11 patients; 5 males and 6 females with mean age of 50.5±11; range: 35-69 years. All patients were subjected to clinical evaluation, radiological examination with either CT or MRI scaning or both. All aspirations were carried out in the ENT outpatient department.
Results: Five patients presented by oropharyngeal mass; while the other 5 patients had variable site lesions. One patient had cervical lymphadenopathy. Cytological examination of aspirate diagnosed 6 cases as benign and 5 cases were interpreted as suspicious or malignant. The 5 cases diagnosed as malignant on aspiration cytology were confirmed histopathologically with no false positive diagnosis. However, 2 case of the 6 lesions diagnosed cytologically as being benign lesions were found to be malignant. Thus, FNAC detected all malignant lesions with specificity 100% but showed 2 false negative results with a sensitivity rate for exclusion of malignancy of 66.7%. ROC curve analysis showed that FNAC could define malignancy with high specificity as judged by AUC=0.833.
Conclusion: It could be concluded that FNAC is a feasible, minimally invasive diagnostic procedure for oral and pharyngeal malignancy with high specificity that could be preformed as preliminary examination of such swelling in the outpatient clinic so as to save time and spare surgical biopsy taking. TANTA MEDICAL JOURNAL 2008