Abstract
The objective of the current study was to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) of submucous nodules from the oral cavity and head and neck region as an auxiliary diagnostic tool. Fifty patients with nodule lesions in the oral cavity and the head and neck region were selected. All of them were submitted to FNAB and to either incisional or excisional biopsy. The diagnoses from the FNABs were compared with the biopsy diagnosis as the gold standard. All the cases of FNAB were analyzed by a single oral pathologist prior to the biopsy diagnosis. The results showed that the sensitivity of FNAB was 75%, its specificity was 96% and its accuracy was 58.8%. The false positive and false negative rates were 6.7% and 13.3%, respectively. The positive predictive value was 86% and the negative predictive value was 93%. The inconclusive rate was 16/50. FNAB displayed a high success rate for identifying both malignant and benign lesions, but a low accuracy for making a final diagnosis.
Highlights
In 1930, two doctors from a New York hospital, Martin and Colley, and a technical developer, Ellis, conducted aspirations from several organs and conducted cytological studies on them.[1,2,3,4]fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) is primarily used for biopsies of palpable masses and deep lesions with difficult access
The estimation of the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the FNAB method was conducted according to the definitions of Trott,[5] where sensitivity is the ability of the test to identify malignant lesions and specificity is the ability to identify benign lesions
Accuracy was calculated as the number of FNAB results that were similar to those of the regular biopsy
Summary
FNAB is primarily used for biopsies of palpable masses and deep lesions with difficult access. It is widely used in the head and neck regions, such as in the thyroid, lymph nodes, major salivary glands and others neoplasias.[2, 4,5,6,7]. The most common masses biopsied in this manner are odontogenic tumors, intraosseous lesions, minor salivary gland tumors, sublingual salivary glands and other oral regions.[6, 8,9,10,11,12] some reports have described the relevance of FNAB for the diagnosis of oral cavity lesions and oropharyngeal lesions.[8, 9]
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