The Role of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology and Frozen Section in the Evaluation of Parotid Lesions

Background: A retrospective review of our institution's experience with diagnostic accuracy of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and frozen section (FS) in the evaluation of parotid gland lesions.Materials and methods: All patients who underwent parotidectomies over an 8-year period from 2008 to 2016 at a single tertiary institution were included in this study.The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value, and histological concordance of FNAC and FS for various parotid lesions were evaluated.Results: A total of 129 lesions were included in this study.The most common lesion found on final histology was pleomorphic adenoma (42.6%).Approximately 92.2% of patients underwent FNAC and 57.4% of patients underwent intraoperative FS for their parotid lesions.FNAC had a sensitivity and specificity of 93.4 and 100%, respectively, in terms of differentiating between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions.In diagnosing malignant neoplasms, the accuracy of FNAC was 98.6% with a PPV of 100%, while the accuracy of FS was 97.0% with a PPV of 100%.Conclusion: Fine needle aspiration cytology and FS are useful and complementary tools in differentiating neoplastic from non-neoplastic lesions, and in the diagnosis of malignant parotid neoplasms.