A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EFFICACY (SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY) OF FINE NEEDLE ASPIRATIONAL CYTOLOGY AND OPEN BIOPSY IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF ORO-FACIAL TUMOURS

Abstract

The aim of the study is to compare the efficacy of fine needle aspirational
cytology with open surgical biopsy in the diagnosis of oro-facial tumours in
patients seen at the Dental Centre of Lagos University Teaching Hospital
from May 2005 – May 2006.

Patients and methods: Fine needle aspiration was performed on all
patients scheduled for open surgical biopsy at the Oral and Maxillofacial
clinics of the hospital before the open surgical biopsy was done. 46 patients
whose final histological diagnoses were various oro-facial neoplasms were
involved in this study. Features assessed were patients’ demographic data,
sites of lesions, duration before presentation, fine needle aspirational
cytology diagnosis and histological diagnosis. These were recorded on the
data sheets and subjected to descriptive statistics. Also sensitivity,
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specificity and accuracy for fine needle aspirational cytology were
calculated.

Results: The age group of patients mostly affected by both benign and
malignant oro- facial tumours were those in the 20-30years age range.
There was a slight male preponderance with a male to female ratio of 1.1:1.
The commonest benign neoplasm was ameloblastoma while the commonest
malignant neoplasm was squamous cell carcinoma. The sensitivity,
specificity and accuracy of fine needle aspirational cytology in the
diagnosis of oro-facial tumours were 95%, 95.8% and 95.5% respectively.
The false positive and false negative rates were 5% and 4.2% respectively.

Conclusion: The high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of fine needle
aspirational cytology reported in this study suggest that the test may have a
place in the management of oro-facial tumours. However, when the result
of fine needle aspirational cytology is not in agreement with the clinical
diagnosis, especially in suspected malignancy, open surgical biopsy should
be performed.