Comparison of fine needle aspiration and direct skin smear in the diagnosis of acute cutaneous leishmaniasis: polymerase chain reaction as a reference method

Background: Accurate diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis wouldavoid unnecessary treatment and scar formation. Direct smear isthe most common method for the diagnosis of this disease but itsnegative result could not rule out the infection; so, the need formore sensitive methods is obvious. We conducted this study tocompare the efficiency of direct skin smear with smears preparedby fine needle aspiration (FNA) using polymerase chain reaction(PCR) as a reference method.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, which was conductedduring two years from May 2008 to May 2010, 33 patients withsuspicious acute cutaneous leishmaniasis based on clinical studieswere randomly selected. Direct skin smears and FNA smearswere taken from each patient and PCR was performed on biops