The efficacy of lymph node fine needle aspiration

*Corresponding Author Abstract Introduction: Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of lymph nodes is a safe, easy, cheap and quick diagnostic tool, which involves the examination of a random sample of cells from a lymph node. Aim: To assess the distribution of diagnostic categories and the efficacy of lymph node fine needle aspiration cytology at our institution. These were compared to the literature. Methodology: All of lymph node FNAC cases taken between the 1 January 2012 and the 31 December 2013 were retrieved from our Laboratory Information System. A total of 300 cases were retrieved and then placed into one of six categories; Category 1: Non-diagnostic, 2: Reactive, 3: Probably reactive but lymphoma cannot be excluded, 4: Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, 5: Hodgkin lymphoma, and 6: Metastasis. These were then correlated with the histology of the lymph node excision specimens. Results: The proportion of diagnoses placed under categories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 represent 14%, 53%, 4.3%, 5.7%, 1.7% and 21.3% of the total respectively. The overall efficacy of FNAC showed a sensitivity of 84.5%, specificity of 99.3%, a false negative rate of 10%, a false positive rate of 0.7%, accuracy of 93.1%, positive predictive value of 98.8% and negative predictive value of 89.9%. Conclusions: FNAC of lymph nodes is a very useful and effective tool in triaging patients with lymphadenopathy.