A One Year Audit of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology For the Pre‐Operative Diagnosis of Breast Disease

In 1988, 985 patients presenting with breast disease, most with a palpable abnormality, were investigated by the triple approach (clinical examination, imaging and fine needle aspiration cytology [FNAC]). Using FNAC, 28% of patients were diagnosed as having carcinoma, 45% benign disease, 4% had suspicious cytology and 3% equivocal cytology. the remaining 20% had inadequate aspirates. Two false positive diagnoses of carcinoma were made (a false positive rate of 0.7%); one was a case of high grade non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma and the other a papillary lesion with epithelial atypia. the false negative rate was 6.4%. of these 49 patients, six had carcinoma‐in‐situ and 19 had low grade tumours. the absolute and complete sensitivities for the diagnosis of carcinoma in this series were 84.7% and 91.9% respectively and the absolute and complete specificities 99.7% and 98.3%, respectively. These figures compare favourably with those from other centres and confirm the efficacy of FNAC as part of the triple approach to the diagnosis of breast disease. the use of FNAC has resulted in a reduction in the numbers of Trucut and frozen section biopsies performed. Eighty three per cent of the patients with benign disease diagnosed by the triple approach have avoided excision biopsy, none of whom have subsequently been found to have carcinoma. Eighty patients with advanced breast carcinoma were spared operative intervention.