A Study of Diagnostic Value on Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of the Breast Masses

유방종괴의 세침흡인세포학의 진단적 가치에 관한 연구

This study was performed in order to evaluate the accuracy and the usefulness of the fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) on the breast lesions, to compare the FNAC findings between fibroadenoma and fibrocystic disease, and to determine the accuracy of cytologic Black's nuclear grading. The subjects in this study were 110 cases of FNAC, later confirmed by biopsy, between January 1988 and December 1991. The results are as follows ; 1 Comparison between the results of the FNAC and the histologic findings revealed that FNAC had a sensitivity of 96.6%, a specificity of 100%, a false negative rate of 3.4% a false positive rate of 0.0%, and an overall diagnostic accuracy of 98.2%. 2 Semi-quantitative evaluation of epithelial celluarity, stroma, and naked nuclei in the smears of aspirate showed high celluarity in 56.7% of the aspirates from fibroadenoma and in 0% of those from fibrocystic disease. Abundant stroma was found in 46.7% of the fibroadenoma and none of fibrocystic disease. Numerous naked nuclei were found in 60% of the fibroadenoma and 4.5% of the fibrocystic disease. The overall diagnostic accuracy was 98% 3. In order to determine the accuracy of Black's nuclear grading of FNAC on breast carcinoma, we retrospectively studied 38 cases of ductal carcinomas diagnosed by FNAC with subsequent histologic confirmation. The concordance rate with histology was 94.7%. These results suggest that FNAC of breast is a diagnostically accurate method, and provide for the preoperative differential diagnosis between fibroadenoma and fibrocystic disease. Our results also suggest that the evaluation of nuclear grading of FNAC can predict clinical outcome and decide the way of management of breast cancer.