back to contentsDiagnostic significance of oral cytology:
Clinicostatistic analysis
Makoto Suzuki,1)2) Takashi Saku2)
1)Laboratory for Clinical Investigation, Niigata University Dental Hospital
(Chief: Prof. Tamio Nakajima)
2)Department of Oral Pathology, School of Dentistry, Niigata University
(Director: Prof. Takashi Saku)
Abstract:
@A series of 863 cases of cytologic examinations of the oral and maxillofacial regions, which had been performed during 6 years from 1990 through 1995, were reviewed, and efficacy of this method was assessed. Cytologic examination was applied mainly to the patients who were clinically suspected of malignancy at the initial stage of diagnosis, or those who were under course of anti-tumor therapy or post-therapeutic observation.
@The sensitity for detecting malignancy was 74.8% and the specificity to diagnose non-malignant change was 79.8%. Overall accuracy was 63.6%. False negative rate was 34.8% and false positive rate was 13.8%. False diagnoses were mostly attributed to inadequate sampling. Careful attentions should be payed to sampling in order to eliminate false negativity.
@In the Papanicolaou's class III group, varieties of lesions were identified histologically. Class III should be applied only to the true borderline cytologic morphology. When the cytologic features are suggestive of a specific histologic criterion, the use of the histologic diagnosis is more recommendable than that of the Papanicolaou's classification.