Abstract
Background and aims: Bronchial cytology (BC) is well established in the diagnosis of lung cancer but some cases remain equivocal. Liquid-based cytology (LBC) was developed to improve the diagnostic accuracy and increase the sensitivity for malignancy in BC. The study was conducted to compare the diagnostic performance of CytoRichRed (CRR) fixed Tripath preparations with conventional smears (CS) from bronchial brushings (BB) and bronchial washings (BW).
Methods: BB and BW from 61 patients, subjected to fiberoptic bronchoscopy were studied. BW specimens were split into two equal parts, one part was fixed in CRR and prepared according to the TriPath protocol, one part was ethanol-fixed and stained according to Papanicolaou. BBs were smeared onto slides, air-dried and Giemsa-stained, then brushes were rinsed in CRR and the cellular suspensions were processed according to the Tripath technique. Slides were evaluated in a blinded fashion and cytological diagnoses were compared with “true” diagnoses, based on histology and clinical data.
Results: In all 575 and 244 CS and 61 and 61 CRR/Tripath slides were prepared from the BB and the BW, respectively. CS diagnoses agreed in 57/61 cases. In the four discrepant cases the conventional/CRR diagnoses were atypia/benign, benign/atypia (malignancy favoured), benign/equivocal, atypia (reactive favoured)/benign. All four cases turned out to be malignant.
Conclusions: The diagnostic accuracy did not differ between conventional and CRR/Tripath preparations, Our results indicate that LBC using CCR/Tripath can replace CS, significantly reducing work load and cost.
- © 2011 ERS
