- ISSN: 0253-8253
- EISSN: 2227-0426
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oa Cytological Grading of Breast Cancer on Fine Needle Aspirates (FNA): Why Bother?
- Source: Qatar Medical Journal, Volume 2003, Issue 2, Dec 2003,
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- 01 December 2003
Abstract
FNA has emerged as a powerful and accurate diagnostic tool for breast carcinomas. In the experienced hands false positive and false negative diagnosis have been reduced to a minimum. It has also been recognized that besides diagnosis, several other important clinical prognostic information can be obtained from FNA material. These include estrogen and progesterone recep-tor assay, proliferative fraction and oncogene products. These are achieved by subjecting the FNA material to immunoperoxidase methods, ploidy analysis an'd S phase frac-tion on flow cytometry. Lately cytological grading of breast cancer has been added to these investigations 1.2.3.4.5 Since histology is the gold standard in the diagnosis of breast cancer, and since the FNA obviously may not sample enough breast volume, the question is why bother with cytological grading of breast cancer? Why don't we wait and do the grading on histol-ogy where several sections would be examined and thereby cover any kind of variations in the tumor? On the other hand histo-logical grading of breast carcinoma assesses mainly nuclei mor-phology and architectural configurations.
