Fine needle aspiration cytology of bone tumours- the experience from the National Orthopaedic and Lagos University Teaching Hospitals, Lagos, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Due to difficulty in confirming clinical suspicions of malignancy in patients presenting with bone tumours, the cost of surgical biopsies where hospital charges are borne almost entirely by patients, competition with bone setters and healing homes with high rate of loss to follow up; we set out to find if sufficient material could be obtained to arrive at reliable tissue diagnosis in patients with clinical and radiological evidence of bone tumours in our hospitals. METHODS: After initial clinical and plain radiographic examinations, patients were sent for fine needle aspirations. Aspirations were carried out with size 23G needles of varying lengths with 10 ml syringes in a syringe holder (CAMECO, Sebre Medical, Vellinge, Sweden). The aspirates were air dried, stained by the MGG method and examined microscopically. Histology was performed on patients who had subsequent surgical biopsy. These were then correlated with the cytology reports. RESULTS: Out of 96 patients evaluated, [57 males, 39 females, Mean age 31.52 years, Age Range 4–76 years,] material sufficient for diagnosis was obtained in 90 patients. Cytological diagnosis of benign lesions was made in 40 patients and malignant in 47. Of these, 27 were metastases, osteogenic sarcoma 16, giant cell tumour 19, infection 11. Histology was obtained in 41 patients. Correct diagnosis of benignity was made in 17 out of 18 cases, malignancy in 21 out of 22 cases. One non-diagnostic case was malignant. The accuracy of specific cytological diagnosis was 36/41 (87.8%) and incorrect in 5/41 (12.2%). CONCLUSION: We conclude that FNAC can be useful in the pre-operative assessment of bone tumours especially where other diagnostic modalities are unavailable.