2024 Volume 63 Issue 1 Pages 1-6
Objective : Liquid-based cytology (LBC) is widely used worldwide to standardize specimen preparation. ThinPrep® is the most commonly applied specimen preparation method for LBC. Therefore, evaluation of slides prepared using ThinPrep® and the preparation process are meaningful. In the present study, we determined the minimum number of cells required to detect malignant cells on LBC slides prepared using ThinPrep®.
Study Design : Specimens were prepared by mixing 5000, 500, 50, or 5 HeLa cells as malignant cells with 500000 squamous (oral) cells. LBC examination was performed after Papanicolaou staining, and the number of malignant cells on the slides were counted.
Results : Malignant cells could be detected in all the slides prepared from specimens containing 5000, 500, or 50 HeLa cells mixed with 500000 squamous cells. However, malignant cells could be detected only from some of the slides made from specimens containing 5 HeLa cells mixed with 500000 squamous cells.
Conclusion : Detection of malignant cells in specimens prepared using ThinPrep® requires the presence of more than 50 malignant cells in the specimen.
