Study of Correlation of Preoperative Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology with Histopathological Examination in Thyroid Swellings

Introduction: Though fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) for thyroid is acclaimed as a gold standard before going for intervention, there are some limitations with respect to tissue availability, technique, skill of performer, etc. So, a crosssectional study was conducted to determine the accuracy of FNAC in diagnosis of thyroid swelling and to assess the correlation between preoperative cytopathological diagnosis and postoperative histopathological diagnosis. Materials and methods: Data collected from records in the time period of 3 years, i.e., from August 2012 to August 2015, were evaluated and analyzed. Results: A total number of 93 cases were included in the study of which majority were females with frequency of 84.94%, most of the incidence of thyroid swellings occur in the age group of 40 to 50 years. Overall mismatch between histopathological examination and FNAC was 43 out of 93 and of which 7 were major and 36 were minor mismatch. Sensitivity of patients having malignancy with positive FNAC is 82.35% from the study and specificity of patients with nonmalignant thyroid disease and positive cytology is 95.18%. Conclusion: It was observed that FNAC is a reliable, safe, and accurate method as a first line of evaluation in thyroid swelling before the surgery. Fine needle aspiration cytology is more sensitive in detecting thyroid gland malignancy but still correlation is always necessary and therefore, histopathological analysis still remains essential for final diagnosis.