Role of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology in Evaluation of Bony Lesions

Introduction: Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) is increasingly being recognised for its diagnostic utility in evaluation of bone tumours. Though open surgical biopsy is the procedure of choice for diagnosis of bony tumours. Aim: To evaluate the efficacy and reliability of FNAC in diagnosis of bony tumours. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included 40 patients with bony lesions from July 2018 to December 2019 in tertiary level center of Rajasthan. FNAC was performed after clinical and radiological assessment. The smears were stained using standard techniques. Also, open biopsy was performed in the patients who presented with bony lesions of patients and slides prepared for histopathological examination using standard techniques. The data was entered in Excel sheets and the results were evaluated using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20.0. Results: Adequate material was obtained in FNAC in 29 (72.5%) cases. Out of 29 cases, FNAC results were accurate in 96.5% cases. False Negative report was obtained in one case with no false positives. Sensitivity of FNAC in diagnosing bony lesions comes to be 90% and Specificity was 100% The Positive Predictive Value (PPV) comes to be 100% and the Negative Predictive Value (NPV) is 95.4%. Conclusion: FNAC is invaluable tool in primary diagnosis of bony lesions. The technique of obtaining sufficient material though needs to be mastered and will definitely improve with more experience and radiologic correlation.