| Abstract |
Background: Due to new therapeutic options in thoracic oncology, the pathological diagnosis of bronchial carcinoma has become more challenging. The majority of bronchial cancer is diagnosed from small biopsy specimens and the diagnosis are often based on cytological methods. Aims: In this study, we evaluated bronchoalveolar lavage specimens of 333 patients in order to determine the diagnostic reliability of bronchoalveolar lavage cytology by correlating them with bronchial biopsies performed in our hospital. Material and methods: In our center, bronchial lavage/bronchoalveolar lavage (BL/BAL) specimens are obtained and subsequently processed. Sensitivity, specificity, as well as accuracy of cytological tumor typing were determined using histopathology of tissue biopsy (TB) as gold standard. Results: Three hundred and thirty three BAL samples were studied. Forty six cases were available for bronchial biopsy comparison, out of which forty two were malignant and four were benign lesions. The sensitivity and specificity of cytology were 88.57% and 90.90%, respectively. Sub classification of lung carcinoma into small cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma was possible in 100%, 88.8% and 76.4% cases respectively. Conclusions: Cytology is a reliable diagnostic tool in the diagnosis of lung malignancies. Subsequent sub classification of the tumour by cytology was possible in more than 88% of cases.
KEYWORDS: Bronchoalveolar Lavage, Cytology, Malignancy. |
