Correlation of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology and Core Needle Biopsies in Breast carcinoma: Our experience

Background: The management of breast carcinoma relies heavily on the diagnostic parameters. Over the years there has been a steady decline in the usage of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) over more popular core needle biopsy (CNB). The present study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital to evaluate the role of FNAC and CNB in diagnosis of suspicious breast cancer by keeping mastectomiessurgical excision (SE) as gold standard. Methods: A total of 60 patients were subjected to simultaneous on site FNAC and CNB. Histopathological correlation (SE) was available in half of the cases only (30 cases). While the Cytological grading was done according to Robinson grading system; the histopathological grading was done by Nottingham Modification of Scarff-Bloom Richardson method. All the findings were compared and statistical analysis was done. Result: In contrast to FNAC where 29 cases were diagnosed as malignant only 26 cases were diagnosed as malignant on CNB with 3 cases signed out as non diagnostic for malignancy owing to non-sampling from the representative areas. Cytological grading assessment was higher with most of the cases kept in grade 3 (46.6 %) as compared to lower grading ( grade 2) on CNB62.07% cases. On comparing, FNAC and CNB; 22 showed agreement but this agreement was not statistically significant (p=0.14) Comparison of CNB and SE; in 17 cases agreement were noted for both CNB and SE and statistically the values were highly significant (p=0.0001). On comparison of FNAC and SE in 13 cases agreement was noted for both FNAC and SE and the data was statistically significant (p=0.035). Conclusion: Thus it was concluded in the present study that FNAC and CNB are comparable and also showed high sensitivity and pick up rate of FNAC as compared to CNB.CNB is however; more accurate for eventual grading and has Original Article *Corresponding author: Email: [email protected] Parul Garg1*, Harjot Kaur2, Navtej Singh1, Arun Puri1 and Ishwer Tayal3 an advantage that immunohistochemical studies can be applied on them. Dr Parul Garg, Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, Guru Gobind Singh Medical College, Faridkot (Punjab) India