European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background:
Breast lesions constitutes a major public health problem worldwide, both in developed as well as in developing countries. A palpable breast lump, whether benign or malignant, is a cause of great anxiety to the patient. Thus, the need arises to distinguish benign from malignant lesions, prior to definitive treatment.
The National Health Services Breast Screening Program recommends Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) as a non-operative diagnostic tool. One of the major goals of FNAC is to differentiate benign from malignant lesions.
Aim & Objectives:

To diagnose any palpable lump of the breast in females by FNAC
To correlate Cytological findings with histopathological results.

Methods and Materials: Retrospective study done at department of pathology at a tertiary centre, Karnataka for 2 years (2018-2019). FNAC of the breast lesions done and the excision biopsy of the same specimen sent for histopathological examination were taken in this study.
Results: In this study,a total of 200 cases on cytology were correlated with their histological diagnosis. Fibroadenoma (116 cases) being the most common benign lesion and intraductal carcinoma (29 cases) being the most common malignant breast lesion.
Conclusion: FNAC is a reliable tool to rule out benign from malignant lesions and shows high concordance with the histopathological reports. Therefore cytology can play a vital role in the evaluation and management of the patients with palpable breast mass.