COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DIAGNOSTIC ACCURACY OF INTRAOPERATIVE CYTOLOGY AND FROZEN SECTION IN IRAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES HOSPITALS FROM JULY 2001 TO DECEMBER 2002

Performing frozen section is a common intraoperative consult with the goal of determining the lesion as benign or malignant. Since frozen section needs specific technical requirements and costs a lot therefore, in some studies cytology is used as an alternative method. Most of these studies have been done on specific organs and a few of them on all organs of the body. Therefore, we prospectively studied the usefulness of intraoperative cytology and frozen section in the diagnosis of 100 consecutive cases. The study used sensitivity, specifity and accuracy as statistical tools for comparison. The intraoperative results were compared with final histopathologic diagnosis. For intraoperative cytology the sensitivity, specifity and accuracy were 95.8%, 92.5% and 95% respectively and for frozen section these were 97.2%, 96.3% and 97%. There were not any significant differences between these statistics(P>0.05). These data confirm the value of intraoperative cytology in diagnosis of all mass lesions. This method can also be use as an alternative technique to frozen section in case there is no technical requirements or as a complementary method in all specimens.