Comparison Of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology Of Axillary Lymph Node And Biopsy In Breast Cancer Patients

摘要

PurposeAll the patients with a non-operative diagnosis of invasive breast cancer should have ipsilateral axillary ultrasound performed,preferably at the time of initial assessment. If this was not performed initially, it should be done as soon as possible followingcore biopsy diagnosis of the breast cancer. The number and morphology of any abnormal nodes should be documented1. Nonational guidelines are available to give the utility of FNA versus biopsy of axillary nodes. They are regarded as equal, however,we had a couple of difficult experiences in reporting of FNA results, and therefore we decided to do an audit while comparingthe two techniques by keeping the histology as gold standard.MethodThe specimens were searched from last two-year period starting from 1st January 2015 to 31 December 2016. All of the axillarylymph node FNA’s were searched through Winpath search engine. Only the axillary lymph nodes with breast cancers wereseparated. Out of these all the FNA’s which had no follow up histology were excluded. So, in the end 82 FNA specimens wereincluded in the audit. L codes for fine needle aspiration cytology were used (LC1 to LC5).Results82 FNAs were recorded. Fine needle aspiration cytology showed accuracy of 76.3%ConclusionOur LC3 and LC4 calling is relatively lower when compared with other centres. However, a little more consideration is neededregarding overcalling LC3. Despite the comparable results FNA has its limitations regarding sampling of the correct nodeshence the PPV of LC2 being 17%. There is a significant rate of LC1 which is dependent on performer’s competency amongothers.