Background: Aspiration of serous cavities is a simple and relatively non-invasive technique toachieve diagnosis. Cytological evaluation of body cavity fluid is diagnostically challenging. Especiallyin malignant effusions, helps in staging, prognosis and management of the patients. Aims: Toassess the utility and sensitivity of cell block method over conventional smear technique incytodiagnosis of the serous effusions. And to assess the utility and sensitivity of cytologicalevaluation of body fluids with biochemical and clinical correlation. Methods: A total of 150 fluidspecimens were examined for conventional cytological smear (CS) and cell block method (CB). Outof 150 fluids, 96 were pleural fluid, 48 were ascitic fluid, 04 fluid from pouch of Douglas and 01 wasfrom synovial fluid. Results: In this study, the utility of the CB method in the cytodiagnosis ofmalignant effusions was found to be highly significant as compared to the CS method. The additionalyield of malignancy was 12% more as was obtained by the CB method. Conclusion: For the finalcytodiagnosis of body fluid, there is statistically significant difference between the two techniques. Inother words, CB is superior to CS method. It gives more information about the architecturalarrangement and the likely source of primary. More important is that diagnostic material in cellblocks is available for special studies for Immunohistochemistry which can further supplement ourknowledge about the primary source of metastasis.
Exfoliative cytology of different body fluids- an important aid to primary diagnosis
