title: Fine needle aspiration cytodiagnosis of Hodgkin's disease and its subtypes. II. Subtyping by differential cell counts.
abstract: Differential cell counts were performed on fine needle aspiration (FNA) smears from 96 cytologically diagnosed and subsequently biopsy-proven cases of Hodgkin's disease (HD). Reed-Sternberg cells and Hodgkin cells showed a definitely increasing trend in three major HD subtypes (as diagnosed on the smears): lymphocytic predominance (LP), mixed cellularity (MC) and lymphocytic depletion (LD). Lymphocytes, on the other hand, showed a decreasing trend between these subtypes. The differences in the percentages of Hodgkin cells, Reed-Sternberg cells and lymphocytes were highly significant (P less than .001). No trends (increasing or decreasing) were observed in the smear content of other reactive components (non-neoplastic histiocytes, eosinophils, plasma cells and neutrophils). In 88.0% to 95.0% of the cytologically diagnosed cases of LP, MC and LD subtypes, the percentages of Hodgkin cells plus Reed-Sternberg cells fell within a distinct range: less than 1.5% for LP, greater than or equal to 1.5% to less than 7.5% for MC and greater than or equal to 7.5% for LD. Analysis of the data based on histopathologic subtyping of the cases showed similar significant trends in the proportions of Hodgkin cells, Reed-Sternberg cells and lymphocytes, with 70.0% to 80.0% of the LP, MC and LD subtype cases within these ranges. These results demonstrate the validity of the subjective subtyping of HD on FNA smears in most cases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cytology, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.
authors.forename: D K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: S K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001707:Biopsy, Needle / Q000379:methods*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006689:Hodgkin Disease / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged