Abstract
The usefulness and problems associated with liquid based cytology in the cytodiagnosis of oral scratch were investigated with Thin Prep®.The results indicated that problems with liquid-based cytology included the cost, time for making specimens, and storage conditions of the preservation solution. On the other hand, the benefits of this method were as follows:
1.Sufficient numbers of cells for observation can be obtained.
2.The quality is not reduced by drying or smearing procedures.
3.Although the oral mucosa bleeds easily, such bleeding does not result in unclear regions.
4. Observation is possible even in cases in which a cancerous background, such as necrotic tissue or cancer-related findings (such as Candida infection), is not resolved completely.
5. Deep-layer squamous cells can be collected relatively easily even for the exophytic type of tumors.
6. This method causes less cellular overlap and is useful for morphological and molecular biological analyses and immunohistochemical staining.
The observations discussed above indicate that liquid-based cytology is a highly useful system.
