Fine needle aspiration cytology of head and neck masses.

Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) was done on 150 patients with swelling in the head and neck region, during the period of 18 months from July 1994 to December 1995. Of these, 55 patients underwent surgery permitting a correlation between the histopathological diagnosis based on permanent paraffin sections and the diagnosis made by FNAC in order to evaluate FNAC in terms of accuracy along with its complications and limitations. The overall accuracy in the 55 cases evaluated was 92.73% with sensitivity of 90.91% and specificity of 93.18%. It was confirmed that FNAC is a highly diagnostic procedure for assessing swellings in the head and neck region. The method is simple, safe and economical.