Reliability of Imprint Cytology and Frozen Sections for Demonstrating Free Surgical Margins in the Periocular Basal Cell Carcinoma

The present was conducted to measure the sensitivity and specificity of imprint cytology (IC) and frozen section (FS) in the evaluation of margin involvement of periocular basal cell carcinoma (BCC).

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 36 patients who underwent an excisional biopsy of periocular BCC. The surgical margins of each excised mass were tested for involvement by tumoral cells using three pathologic methods as follows. Samples were obtained for IC from the marginal territory of the tumor. Then, FS samples were obtained and the tissue was prepared for permanent histopathologic evaluation, the results of which were considered as the gold standard to compare two other methods. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of each method were calculated accordingly.

Thirty-six patients (20 males and 16 females) with the mean age of 73±12 years who had periocular BCC were enrolled and a total of 121 samples were obtained from the margins. The sensitivity and specificity of FS were 94.3 and 97.7% and of IC were 51.4 and 84.9%, respectively. Also, Positive and negative predictive value for FS were 94.3 and 97.7 and for IC were 58.1 and 81.1%, respectively.

Although less expensive and more feasible than FS, IC lacks diagnostic accuracy for demarcating the extent of resection of eyelid BCC.