Study of effusion cytology in patients with simultaneous malignancy and ascites.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate sensitivity of effusion cytology in detecting malignancy. MATERIALS AND METHODS Effusion cytology was studied from 37 malignancy associated and 28 non malignancy associated ascitic fluid samples. RESULTS Out of 65 cases, 44 (67.7%) effusions were reported negative, 15 (23.1%) were positive and 6 (9.2%) were suspicious for malignancy. Thus total 21 effusions (32.3%) were tumour cell positive. All 21 (100%) were true positive, none (0%) was false positive, 28 (63.6%) were true negative and 16 (36.4%) were false negative. Thus ascitic fluid cytology had sensitivity of 56.7% and specificity of 100%. Predictive value of positive test and negative test was 100% and 63.6% respectively. Stomach was the most common primary site of malignancy associated with ascites (11/37 i.e. 29.7%) where as adenocarcinoma was the most common type of malignancy (11/15 i.e.73.3%) in ascitic fluid cytology. CONCLUSION Ascitic fluid cytology is a simple and useful procedure with sensitivity of 56.7% and should be routinely requested.