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Assessing the Agreement Between Preoperative Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) Done for Major Salivary Gland Neoplasm When Reported by Head and Neck Pathologists and Non-head and Neck Pathologists with Its Final Histopathology

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Abstract

The preoperative FNA is an important investigation in the workup of a salivary gland pathology. A preoperative diagnosis is important to plan management and counsel patients accordingly. In this study, we aimed to assess the agreement between the preoperative FNA and the final histopathology report when reported by a head and neck and a non-head and neck pathologist. All patients with major salivary gland neoplasm having undergone a preoperative FNA before surgery from January 2012 to December 2019 at our hospital were included in the study. Analysis was done to check for concordance between head and neck and non-head and neck pathologists of the preoperative FNA and final histopathology. Three hundred and twenty-five patients were included in the study. The preoperative FNA could identify the tumour as benign or malignant in the majority (n = 228, 70.1%). The agreement between the preoperative FNA, frozen section diagnosis and the reporting of grade in the frozen section and the final HPR was slightly better with the head and neck pathologist (kappa = 0.429, kappa = 0.698 and kappa = 0.257), respectively, than with the non-head and neck pathologist (kappa = 0.387, kappa = 0.519 and kappa = 0.158), all of which was statistically significant (p < 0.001). The diagnosis made with the preoperative FNA and reporting in the frozen section had a fair agreement with the final histopathology when reported by a head and neck pathologist in comparison to a non-head and neck pathologist.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Head & Neck Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital, Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Parel, Mumbai, 400012, Maharashtra, India

    Siddhanth Jain, Shivakumar Thiagarajan & Devendra Chaukar

  2. Nanavati Hospital, Mumbai, India

    Snehal Shah

  3. Department of Pathology, Tata Memorial Hospital, Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Parel, Mumbai, 400012, Maharashtra, India

    Munita Bal & Asawari Patil

Authors
  1. Siddhanth Jain
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  2. Shivakumar Thiagarajan
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  3. Snehal Shah
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  4. Munita Bal
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  5. Asawari Patil
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  6. Devendra Chaukar
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Correspondence to Shivakumar Thiagarajan.

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Approval from our institutes’ ethics committee was taken for this study (Project No: 900660)

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Jain, S., Thiagarajan, S., Shah, S. et al. Assessing the Agreement Between Preoperative Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) Done for Major Salivary Gland Neoplasm When Reported by Head and Neck Pathologists and Non-head and Neck Pathologists with Its Final Histopathology. Indian J Surg Oncol 14, 53–59 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13193-022-01624-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13193-022-01624-5

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