Diagnostic Efficacy of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology in Neck Swelling - A Systematic Review

Abstract

BACKGROUND Neck swellings are one of the most common presenting complaints of patients in all age groups. Aetiology of neck swelling has various causes congenital or acquired, cystic, inflammatory or neoplastic and vascular. Our aim was to study the diagnostic efficacy of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in neck swellings. METHODS A systematic search on the database of PubMed, Google Scholar and Academia for studies on diagnosing neck swellings by FNAC where histopathological diagnosis is considered gold standard was done and reviewed. The keywords used for searching were FNAC, neck swellings, diagnostic efficacy of FNAC. RESULTS Fine needle aspiration cytological study was considered as the first line investigation for patients presenting with neck swellings and its sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy has been reported. CONCLUSIONS FNAC is easy to perform with almost nil complications and excludes the need for a biopsy which is more complex with complications like infection and haemorrhage. FNAC in neck swellings should be considered as a complementary investigation for histopathological studies, but never a substitute. KEY WORDS FNAC, Thyroid, Tuberculosis (TB) Lymphadenitis, Lymphoma, Secondaries in Neck