Role of fine needle aspiration cytology in assessment of cervical lymphadenopathy in variable age groups: A retrospective study.

Cervical lymphadenopathy is a common clinical problem that confronts us in daily clinical practice. The causes vary from simple treatable infections to malignancies that require highly specialized institutional management. It therefore needs to be speedily investigated. FNAC helps to diagnose multiple lesions avoiding biopsy. To assess the age specific distribution of various cytomorphological patterns of cervical lymphadenopathy. A retrospective study was conducted at Saraswathi Institute of Medical Sciences and Hospital, Hapur on 214 clinically diagnosed cases of cervical lymphadenopathy over a period of two years (January 2012 to December 2014). In this study 300 patients were subjected to FNAC for cervical lymphadenopathy. Among these patients, in 15 cases, the aspirate was inadequate despite repeated endeavours and in 7 cases the opinion offered was equivocal. Hence, these 35 cases were excluded from the study. There were 134 males and 144 females in the study. The M: F in this study was 1: 1.07, with a slight female preponderance. The age at presentation ranged from 1–80 years. Maximum number of patients were in the 21–40 years age group (107 cases, 40.37%) followed by the age group 0–20 years (94 cases, 35.47%) age group. Our study concluded that FNAC is simple, quick, minimally invasive, and inexpensive technique to diagnose cervical lymphadenopathy. It can differentiate a neoplastic from a no neoplastic process and therefore influence patient management preventing patient from being subjected to unnecessary surgery.