A Study on Cytomorphological and Histopathological Correlation of Head and Neck Lesions in a Tertiary Care Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

BACKGROUND The head and neck region is an anatomic site having lymph nodes, nerves, veins, arteries, muscles, mucosal epithelium to salivary glands, thyroid, and a host of developmental tissues. Any of these tissues can become pathological, resulting in a mass. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is regarded as a reliable method of investigation in diagnosis of head and neck lesions. However, histopathology is the gold standard of diagnosis. The purpose of this study was to assess the frequency of head and neck tumours according to the sites of their occurrence and to find out the correlation of cytopathological findings by FNAC and histopathological findings by biopsy. METHODS This prospective study undertaken from June 2012 to June 2014 in the Department of Pathology, IMS and SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar, a tertiary care center. All the patients attending different outdoor of IMS & SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar with head & neck lesions referred for FNAC were included in the study. The results of FNAC were compared with that of histopathological findings by tissue biopsy. Data collected was entered in MS Excel and analysed using the same software. Descriptive statistical measures like frequency and percentage. Data was presented in tabular form. RESULTS The commonest site of lesion was in the lymph node followed by thyroid gland. There was preponderance of female sex in thyroid lesions whereas males were commonest in other sites. The accuracy in cyto-histopathology correlation between benign and malignant lesion was 96.36 % and 88.89 % respectively and was most corroborated in the thyroid lesions (50.6 %). CONCLUSIONS Cyto-histo correlation of head and neck lesions provides an important, quick, excellent, and sensitive diagnostic tool to exclude non-neoplastic lesions from neoplastic lesions. KEYWORDS Head and Neck Lesions, FNAC, Histopathology