COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS OF RESULTS OF FNAC AND FROZEN SECTION IN DIAGNOSIS OF BREAST LESIONS

Abstract

Background: Breast lesions encompass a wide spectrum of diseases, both neoplastic and non-neoplastic. However, effective treatment of breast lesions necessitates early and conclusive diagnosis. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach which includes clinical assessment, radiological examination and pathological tools like FNAC, Frozen section and Histopathology. The present study was conducted to determine and compare the accuracy of FNAC and intraoperative frozen sections in diagnosis of breast lesions by keeping histopathology as gold standard.
 Method: This comparative study included 50 samples of breast lesions during the period of two year and that were subjected to FNAC, frozen section and histopathological evaluation.
 Results: Among 50 cases, 21 (42%) were benign and 29 (58%) were malignant cases according to gold standard. According to FNAC diagnosis, 24 cases were benign and 26 were malignant while according to frozen section diagnosis, 22 cases were benign and 28 were malignant. Among benign category, maximum cases (15;30%) were of fibroadenoma whereas among malignant category maximum cases (27;54%) were of infiltrating duct carcinoma according to gold standard, one case each of tubular and lobular carcinoma. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) and accuracy of FNAC was 89.66%, 100%, 100%, 87.5% and 94% respectively while the sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy of frozen section was 96.55%, 100%, 100%, 95.45% and 98% respectively.
 Conclusion: Both FNAC and frozen section have a high diagnostic accuracy in the evaluation of breast lesions; therefore both should be used as tools for the assessment of breast lesions.
 Keywords: Breast Lesions, Diagnosis, FNAC, Frozen section, Histopathology, Benign, Malignant, Fibroadenoma, Carcinoma