Correlation between Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology and Histopathology of Various Breast Lesions: A Tertiary Care Hospital Based Study

Background: Cancer of breast is a second most common cause of cancer in women. Increase in cases of breast cancer is related to late marriage, birth of child in the later age, shorter period of breast feeding and nulliparity or low parity. Clinical examination in conjunction with fine needle aspiration cytology and mammography also known as ‘Triple Approach’ can divide almost all breast lesions preoperatively into benign and malignant categories. Many a times however, Aspiration cytology diagnosis can be substituted for biopsy diagnosis. It is therefore, very important to evaluate the efficacy of FNAC, which can be done by correlating cytological findings with histopathological diagnosis. Methods: This study comprises of fine needle aspiration cytology and its histopathological correlation in 40 cases of breast lesions. In patient having lump in breast FNAC was carried out in cytology, followed by histopathology was carried out in histopathology laboratory. Results: The benign tumors was most common and diagnosed with more accuracy followed by malignant tumors. Amongst the benign tumours, most common lesion was fibroadenoma. Amongst the malignant tumours, most common was invasive ductal carcinoma. Some inconsistent findings were observed mainly in atypical ductal hyperplasia versus chronic mastitis. Final diagnosis was confirmed by histopathology. Conclusions: Total 40 cases of various breast lesions were studied at tertiary care hospital by fine needle aspiration cytology and histopathology. Out of 40 cases the cyto-diagnosis were compatible with histology in 39 cases, 1 was incompatible with histopathological diagnosis. So, over all sensitivity was 97.3%, specificity 100%, positive predictive value 100%, negative predictive value 66.6%.