Abstract
Methods::
Immediately after the surgical excision of the orbital tumor the tissue fragment was placed onto a sterile towel away from the surgical field, stabilized under the hand of the surgeon and biopsied with a 1 inch, 25 gauge needle attached to a10 ml disposable plastic syringe; at least 3 passes were made into each specimen. The needle was flushed with Hank’s solution repeatedly and the sample was processed for a Cytospin® preparation for cytopathologic examination. After the excised specimens were processed for histology with the employment of H & E sections and other essential stains and studies, the cytopathologic diagnoses were compared with the final histopathologic diagnoses.
Results::
Out of 88 patients collected in 7 years in university referral practice setting, seven cases were excluded from the study because of various technical reasons and artifacts, leaving 81 histopathologic and cytopathologic diagnoses to be compared. In 58/81 cases the cytopathologic and histopathologic diagnoses were correlated. Compared with histopathologic diagnosis cytopathologic diagnosis had a sensitivity of 58.3 %, specificity of 100%. In tumor patients, the cytopathologic diagnoses correlated with the histopathologic diagnoses in 14/14 and 7/25 cases of metastatic/secondary and primary orbital malignancies respectively. In mass forming inflammatory lesions the cytopathologic diagnoses were matched with the histopathologic diagnoses in 10/10 biopsies.
Conclusions::
Even when the sampling error is totally eliminated with an in vitro OFNAB technique of orbital mass lesions the cytopathologic diagnoses were inconclusive or not matching to histopathologic diagnoses in 23 of 81 cases.
Keywords: orbit • oncology • pathology: human