Accuracy of Cytological Diagnosis in Musculoskeletal Tumors

Abstract

In the diagnosis of musculoskeletal tumors, we perform cytological examination with histopathological diagnosis, because cytological diagnosis provides results sooner than histopathological diagnosis after biopsy and surgery. In this study, we examined the accuracy of cytological diagnosis for musculoskeletal tumors.
We studied 199 surgical musculoskeletal tumor specimens (January 2009-December 2010) diagnosed both histopathologically, and the accuracy of cytological diagnosis for musculoskeletal tumors. In 160 cases, the results of cytological diagnosis agreed with those of histopathologcal diagnoses (accuracy: 80.4%). In 39 cases, cytological diagnoses did not. Of these cases, 24 were liposarcoma.
The accuracy of cytological diagnosis of musculoskeletal tumors was found to be acceptable (80.4%). In the case of liposarcoma, the accuracy of cytological diagnosis is very low (22.6%). These findings suggest that it was difficult to diagnose liposarcoma with just cytology.