CT-guided fine-needle aspirations for diagnosis of benign and malignant disease

In 133 consecutive patients, 149 diagnostic fine-needle aspirations were performed in order to diagnose a suspected neoplastic or infectious disease. Most of these procedures were performed on, but not limited to, the pancreas (37), liver (28), lung (28), other intraabdominal sites (25), and retroperitoneum (15). The overall accuracy for both suspected malignant and infectious diseases was 90%. An increase in sampling accuracy was demonstrated when there was immediate evaluation of the aspirated material by a cytopathologist using a "fast" stain technique.