[Feasibility of pre-operative cytologic diagnosis of pathologic processes in the breast]

Results are available of clinical and cytological diagnosis for 200 patients with histologically established benign lesions of the mammary gland. The use of cytological method at the presurgery stage decreases the number of unjustified carcinoma suspects up to 5%. True cytological diagnosis is established in 90% of mastopathies, 84.6% of fibroadenomas and 80.8% of the inflammation cases. Pseudopositive conclusions about carcinoma were made in 2 cases (1% of all the examinees). Thus, the precision of the presurgical cytological diagnosis of benign breast lesions is 94%. This allows to consider it as a highly efficient method of presurgical morphological diagnosis.