Correlation between exfoliative cytology and histopathology in laryngeal cancers - A descriptive study

Objectives: This study was done to evaluate the correlation between exfoliative cytology and histopathology in laryngeal malignancies. Methods: 50 patients with suspected laryngeal malignancies who attended the outpatient department of a rural medical college for a period of one year were selected for the study. All the patients were subjected to direct laryngoscopy and biopsy and the specimen was simultaneously subjected to exfoliative cytological examination and histopathological examination. Cytological examination results were obtained in 24 hours while histopathological examination results took an average of one week to be obtained. Both results were compared to find out the extend correlation between the two. Results: Histopathological examination was set as the gold standard in the study. In the 47 proven cases of squamous cell carcinoma, 33 (70.21%) were positive for cytology also. Specificity was found to be 100%. Of the 25 cases of histopathologically proved poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas, cytology was positive in 23 cases(92% diagnostic accuracy), whereas in 19 cases of moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinomas,only10 were cytologically positive(52.6% diagnostic accuracy). Conclusion: Exfoliative cytology is a simple, rapid and fairly accurate diagnostic method to for laryngeal carcinoma and its diagnostic accuracy is best in poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas.