RESUMO
Lymphadenopathy is a common clinical problem with an often diverse differential diagnosis. To determine if fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) can provide an accurate and reliable diagnosis of malignancy related lymphadenopathy, the records of 328 patients examined by a single cytopathologist were retrieved for analysis. One hundred and seventy-seven (54 percent) were deemed "reactive," 14 (4.3 percent) were unsatisfactory and 91 (27.7 percent) were positive for malignancy. Of the positives, 35 (38.5 percent) were malignant lymphomas. The diagnosis of malignancy was confirmed in 88 (95.7 percent) ofaspirates; 3 (4.5 percent) were deemed false positive using strict criteria. Typing accuracy of malignant lymphomas was 71 percent and for other forms of malignancy the accuracy was 98 percent. The positive predictive value was 97 percent. The results demonstrate that FNAC can provide a reliable diagnosis of malignancy and malignant lymphomas can be fairly reliably typed by this technique (AU)
