Role of fine needle aspiration biopsy in breast masses diagnosis

The cancer of breast is the most common malignancy among women and after cancer of the lung is the second cause of death in females. Thus, early diagnosis and treatment can have a effect significant in prognosis and clinical course of disease. One of the numerous controversial tissues to the clinical management of breast cancers is the role of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) to assess the accuracy and determine the role of FNA in breast cancer diagnosis, we performed both FNA and excisional biopsy in 86 unselected patients with palpable breast masses and correlated the cytologic and histopathologic findings. In our study, FNA had no false-negative and no false-positive results, and the sensitivity of diagnosis of malignant tumors was 88.8%, the specificity of diagnosis of benign lesions was 96.2% and the predictive values were 100%, respectively. On the basis of above study, breast FNA may add a measure of confidence in the diagnosis of benign lesions, provides a safeguard for preventing misdiagnosis of malignant lesion, and might expedite and reduce the cost of managing breast cancer. Also, breast FNA like any diagnostic method depends to individual techniques and continual practice