Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytology in Preoperative Diagnosis of Bone Lesions: A Three-Year Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Aim: The aim is to study the utility of fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in preoperative diagnosis of bone lesions in correlation with radiological and histopathological findings and to determine the spectrum and morphological features of various bone lesions on FNAC.

Materials and methods: A total of 275 cases of bone lesions were studied by FNAC over a period of 3 years. 196 procedures were performed by pathologists, and 107 procedures were guided. Cytology findings were correlated with that of histology on cellblocks or on subsequent surgical biopsies. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was done wherever necessary.

Results: Of the 275 cases, 49 lesions were inflammatory/infectious (granulomatous inflammation-19, nonspecific osteomyelitis-26, and fungal etiology-4), 16 were tumors of undefined neoplastic nature (aneurysmal bone cysts-12, and Langerhans cell histiocytosis-4), 99 lesions were benign (osteoblastoma-6, enchondroma-3, chondroblastoma-14, chondromyxoid fibroma-2, and Giant cell tumor-74), and 111 lesions were malignant (Osteosarcoma-36, chondrosarcoma-7, Ewing's sarcoma-28, lymphomas-4, plasma cell neoplasm-6, adamantinoma of long bone-1, and metastasis-29). Male to female ratio was 2:1, and the age range was between 4 and 84 years. Correlation with histology/cellblock was available in 149 tumors. Metastasis and round cell tumors such as Ewing's sarcoma and lymphoma were differentiated by IHC. The accuracy rate in cytological diagnosis of all bone lesions was 87.9% and for neoplasms was 93%. The discordance in the rest of the cases was due to inadequate cell material, and there were no false positives.

Conclusion: We conclude that FNAC is a simple and accurate preoperative diagnostic technique for assessment of bone tumors.