title: Fine needle aspiration and Tru-Cut biopsy in the diagnosis of soft tissue metastases in breast cancer.
abstract: Soft tissue is a common site of the first recurrence in patients with breast cancer, and soft tissue lesions are often used to assess the efficacy of systemic therapy. It is therefore desirable to obtain histological/cytological verification of such lesions. It is our experience that FNA and TCB in psycho-social respects are superior to a surgical biopsy. Using a surgical biopsy as the key-diagnosis we have compared the diagnostic value of Fine-Needle Aspiration (FNA), Tru-Cut Biopsy (TCB) and clinical evaluation. The FNA was found to be significantly better than TCB in establishing the diagnosis. The diagnostic specificity and sensitivity for FNA was 1.0 and 0.65, while the corresponding figures for TCB and the clinical diagnosis were 1.0 and 0.36 and 0.76 and 0.33, respectively. Since no false positive results were obtained by use of FNA, this procedure seems to be a sufficient diagnostic procedure. However, in case of a negative outcome of the FNA, the diagnosis must be obtained by a surgical biopsy.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001706:Biopsy / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D001707:Biopsy, Needle / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D001943:Breast Neoplasms; D003581:Cytodiagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012983:Soft Tissue Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology / Q000556:secondary*