Abstract
Preoperative fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of major salivary gland tumors performed on 70 patients were classified by modified Papanicolaou's classification and compared with histopathologic diagnoses of the surgically resected specimens.
Histologically, 21 tumors were malignant and 49 benign.
In this series sensitivity for malignancy (i.e. percentage of aspirates correctly diagnosed as malignant in the presence of malignancy) was 87.5%, specificity (i.e. percentage of aspirates correctly diagnosed as benign in the absence of malignancy) was 97.7%, and overall accuracy was 94.9%.
In 47 cases, histopathologic type of the tumor was diagnosed by FNAC specimens. Sixty percent of malignant tumors and 100% of benign tumors were correctly diagnosed.
No significant complications were associated with any of the aspirations performed on the 70 patients.
Based on these data, preoperative FNAC of major salivary gland tumors is thought to be a safe and useful diagnostic method.
