Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsies of the Head and Neck: The Surgical Pathologist's Perspective

Masses of the head and neck comprise a variety of benign and malignant tumors and tumor-like conditions, which may present diagnostic challenges to the surgical pathologist and surgeon. Fine needle aspiration cytology is an increasingly popular technique in the initial evaluation of such lesions. The high diagnostic accuracy of this technique makes it generally preferable to traditional surgical biopsy. It is particularly useful in the sampling of histologically uniform neoplasms of the salivary glands, identification of classical papillary carcinoma and medullary carcinoma of the thyroid, separation of colloid goiter from follicular neoplasms, and confirmation of clinically suspicious lymph node metastases in cases with already documented malignant diseases. Despite its usefulness, aspiration cytology of head and neck lesions has certain inherent pitfalls, and these are briefly examined in this review. Int J Surg Pathol 8(1):17-28, 2000