• Arch Iran Med · Nov 2022

    The Role of Ductal Lavage Cytology in the Diagnosis of Breast Cancer.

    • KamalıGülçin HarmanGH0000-0003-4135-0165Department of Pathology, University of Health Sciences Prof. Dr. Cemil Taşcıoğlu City Hospital, İstanbul, Turkey. and Sedat Kamali.
    • Department of Pathology, University of Health Sciences Prof. Dr. Cemil Taşcıoğlu City Hospital, İstanbul, Turkey.
    • Arch Iran Med. 2022 Nov 1; 25 (11): 748754748-754.

    BackgroundNipple discharge is a common finding which may be a symptom of breast cancer, but it is mostly caused by benign causes. A surgical biopsy followed by a histopathological examination is considered to be the gold standard for the diagnosis of pathological nipple discharge. Non-surgical diagnostic methods should be considered to reduce the need for intervention. Ductal lavage cytology (DLC) is performed by washing and examining the ductal discharge. The usefulness of examining spontaneous discharge is controversial. This study's aim is to evaluate the usefulness in surgical decision-making of ultrasonography (USG), mammography (MMG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ductography, and DLC in patients with pathological nipple discharge.MethodsBetween 2011 and 2018, we retrospectively analyzed 141 patients with pathological nipple discharge who were planned to undergo a surgical procedure and were found to have pathology. In our study, the diagnostic efficiency of DLC for breast cancer diagnosis was compared with USG, MMG, MRI, and ductography.ResultsUSG was performed in all patients, MMG in 51, MRI in 56, ductography in 46 patients, and cytological samples were taken from 63 patients. Twelve of 17 patients with malignant pathology were reported cytologically as suspected malignancy. The sensitivity of DLC was 70.5% (95% CI: 0.489-0.922), and its specificity was 94.1% (95% CI: 0.862-1.020).ConclusionNumerous studies report that cytology is not adequate for final diagnosis. Negative cytology does not exclude the possibility of malignancy, and positive results do not help in the differential diagnosis.© 2022 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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