Diagnostic Utility of Cell Block Method versus Cytospin Method in Pleural and Peritoneal Fluid Cytology

Abstract

Background: Cytological evaluation of body cavity fluid is diagnostically challenging. Improved ethanol formalin fixative is used which offer excellent cytomorphological features. Cell blocks prepared from residual tissue fluids or effusion obtained by aspiration, can be useful adjunct to smear for establishing a more definitive cytopathologic diagnosis. . Methods: A total of 170 fluid specimens were examined for cytospin smear and cell block method. Out of 170 fluids, 102 were peritoneal and 68 were pleural. Each fluid specimen was subjected to cytospin smear (CSS) technique, and 10% alcohol-formalin cell block (CB) technique. Overall morphological details, cellularity, architecture, nuclear and cytoplasmic details were studied in both CSS and CB techniques. Results: In this study, analysis body fluid specimens using cytospin smear and cell block methods revealed that there is no difference between cytospin smear method and CB in defining the benign, fungal and inflammatory conditions. However, CB method could able to identity papillary pattern more efficiently than the cytospin method. Conclusion: Although there was no statistical difference between the results obtained by the cytospin and cell block methods, cell block method in our study accurately diagnosed the cases which were missed or incompletely diagnosed on cytospin smear method. Thus cell block proved to be superior method for the study of effusion as compared to cytospin smear. As the cell blocks permit longer storage and additional analysis such as immunohistochemistry (IHC) and microarray, it should be adopted additionally for