Naresh N. Rai1, Priyanka Patangia2, Sudha Pankaj Meena3
INTRODUCTION Lymph node is a common site of metastasis for various malignancies. So the strong clinical suspicion and thus the early diagnosis of palpable lymphadenopathy by FNAC is of paramount importance. It is useful to differentiate between inflammatory lesions or malignant lesion whether primary or metastatic.
AIMS To establish the role of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as a diagnostic tool in the interpretation of metastatic lymphadenopathy.
MATERIAL AND METHODS The present study was conducted on 295 consecutive patients presented with lymphadenopathy and were reported as metastasis.
OBSERVATIONS Total of 295 cases of metastatic lymphadenopathy were taken. Squamous cell carcinoma was the most common primary tumor metastasizing to lymph nodes (n=133) followed by adenocarcinoma (n=57), duct carcinoma breast (n=22) , mucoepidermoid carcinoma (n=19), undifferentiated carcinoma (n=13), small cell carcinoma (n=11) and other malignancies Cervical lymph nodes were the most commonly involved and the commonest primary site was head and neck. In most of the cases primary could be pointed out based on clinical and cytological findings.
CONCLUSION
FNAC is a rapid, safe, easy and non-expensive diagnostic technique which can be used for initial diagnosis of metastatic lymphadenopathy in a resource challenged environment, confirm secondaries where primary tumor is evident, for detection of primary of unknown origin and for response to treatment.
