Accuracy of Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) in Diagnosis of Major Salivary Gland Tumors.

Salivary glands tumors consist a major part of human tumors which their differentiation and treatment are very different. In addition to clinical experiments, biopsy is helpful method to obtain an accurate diagnosis. The biopsy of oral lesions is provided in different ways and one of them is Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) which is a non-invasive, easy, quick and low cost experiment. The aim of this study was to define the accuracy of FNA in identifying major salivary glands tumors. The study was descriptive, retrospective. The medical records of Department of Pathology, Amir Alam Hospital were reviewed from 1994-2004. Data including age, gender, lesion site and FNA reports of all cases were registered. Histopathologic results of FNA samples and surgical gross reports were matched. Descriptive data was used for registered data analyzing. The SPSS 11.5 software was used for statistical analysis. From 656 specimen of FNA, there were 235 cases with both results of FNA and excisional biopsy. About 55 cases in gross experiment had not been shown tumor like lesion and 11 cases in FNA had not a definite diagnosis because of non sufficient of specimen; all these cases were rejected from study. Next study was for other 169 specimen. Considering negative for benign and positive for malignant, 37, 104, 10 and 18 cases were true positive, true negative, false positive and false negative, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were obtained about 67, 91 and 83%, respectively. Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV) also were computed 78 and 85%, respectively. FNA is a safe, useful and quick method for identifying tumors of major salivary glands.