Background: Malignant soft tissue tumors i.e. soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) are rare and account for less than 1% of total malignancies. However, diagnosis of these tumors is a challenging job for histopathologists because of extreme histological diversity. Aim of the study: To assess the efficacy of fine needle aspiration cytology for the initial diagnosis of superficial soft tissue lesions. Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Pathology. The study was conducted on subjects who presented to the department OPD section with superficial soft tissue masses for the study period. A total of 74 patients reported to the department for the FNAC of soft tissue lesions. We excluded the subjects with lesions of breast, lymph nodes, salivary glands and thyroid. A total of 65 patients were selected for the study. We used Franzen’s type aspiration handle, 20cc syringes for aspiration of the sample from the soft tissue lesion. Results: A total of 65 cases were studies. The results showed that number of benign lesions were 55 and number of malignant cases were 10. Of the benign lesions, lipoma was the most common benign lesion (n=38), followed by hemangioma (n=6) and neurofibroma (n=4).  Conclusion: FNAC is a highly reliable procure for initial diagnosis of superficial soft tissue lesions.
Key words: Benign, FNAC, malignant, cytology.

Received: 10 November 2017                               Revised: 15 November 2017                             Accepted: 22 November 2017
Corresponding author: Dr. Himanshu Chauhan, Department of Pathology, BIMR Hospital Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India, E mail: him_himanshu11@ yahoo.co.in

This article may be cited as: Chauhan H. Assessment of Efficacy of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology for the initial diagnosis of Superficial Soft Tissue Lesions. Int J Res Health Allied Sci 2018; 4(1):131-134.