title: Fine needle aspiration cytology in lesions of oral and maxillofacial region: Diagnostic pitfalls.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of oral and maxillofacial region has not been widely utilized for diagnosis due to diversity of lesion types, heterogeneity of cell populations and difficulties in reaching and aspirating these lesions.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Our aim was to demonstrate the effectiveness of this cheap and simple procedure for the diagnosis of tumor and tumor like lesions of oral and maxillofacial region. In addition, we sought to highlight probable causes of errors in the cases showing lack of correlation between cytological and histological diagnoses.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was conducted on 50 patients of all age groups with various palpable lesions in the oromaxillofacial region. A comparison between cytological and histological diagnosis was done wherever biopsy material was available.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The rate of unsatisfactory FNA was 4%. There were six false negative cases but no false positive case. The sensitivity of our study ranged from 77.7 to 75% including and excluding the suspicious cases, respectively. Specificity and positive predictive value was 100%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  FNAC is a minimally invasive, highly accurate and cost-effective procedure for the assessment of patients with oromaxillofacial lesions. When applied in a proper manner, FNAC can help avoid a surgical biopsy in many cases.
authors: Departments of Pathology, Pt. B. D. Sharma PGIMS, Rohtak, India.
authors: Sunita
authors: S
authors: Singh
authors: Natasha
authors: N
authors: Garg
authors: Sumiti
authors: S
authors: Gupta
authors: Nisha
authors: N
authors: Marwah
authors: Rajneesh
authors: R
authors: Kalra
authors: Virender
authors: V
authors: Singh
authors: Rajeev
authors: R
authors: Sen