The diagnosis of Hodgkin's disease by aspiration biopsy.

B by means of aspiration through a needle has become at Memorial Hospital an indispensable method of obtaining tissue for microscopic diagnosis. The technic is now well established, and the method has been repeatedly described.’’ Admittedly, skill in performing aspiration biopsy and in interpreting the tissue so obtained cannot readily be acquired except in centers in which considerable numbers of cases of neoplastic disease are treated, and in which the pathologists will take the trouble to familiarize themselves with the appearance of the material derived from various tumors by aspiration. It may be emphasized again that aspiration biopsy, as its name implies, is a method of aspiration of tissue through a hollow needle and is not a punch biopsy. During the period of development of aspiration biopsy at Memorial Hospital, there was at first little or no attempt to apply it to the diagnosis of the lymphomatous tumors, as it was believed that it would seldom be reliable in that field, in which histologic diagnosis is so notoriously uncertain even with the benefit of having unimpeachable whole node sections. However, in recent years a number of cases has accumulated in which it has been shown that a diagnosis of lymphosarcoma or Hodgkin’s disease can be reliably made on material obtained by aspiration. The immediate smear is seldom sufficient for a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease. In nearly all cases the diagnosis rests on a paraffin section of the blood clot. The purpose of this paper is to report the experience of five preceding years