Rahman MZ and Islam S
Background: Breast carcinoma is the most common malignant tumour and the leading cause of death from cancer in women. A large number of patients in Bangladesh have been suffering from breast cancer. Now-a-days, FNAC is being performed as a pre-operative test to evaluate breast lump. FNAC is cost effective and can prevent unnecessary surgery. As FNAC became more reliable in diagnosing malignancy and thereby the use of frozen-section histology had been reduced by about 80%. This study intended to look the frequencies of different lesions in FNAC of palpable breast lump. Methods: FNAC was done in a total of 1778 female patients presented with palpable breast lump along with suspected enlarged axillary lymph node, if any. We assessed the age of the patient, lesion size, site, type of lesion and axillary lymph node metastasis in case of malignancies. Results: Age ranges from 14-86 years with a mean age of 33.6 years. Most of the patients were in 21-30 years age group (38.13%). Among the lesions 508 (28.57%) fibroadenoma, 252 (14.17%) carcinoma, 210 (11.81%) fibrocystic changes, 141 (7.93%) abscess, 116 (6.52%) granulomatous lesion, 113 (6.3%) chronic mastitis were identified. 218 (42.91%) of fibroadenoma and 82 (32.54%) of carcinoma were in the age group 21-30 years and 31-40 years respectively. Mean lesion size was 4.3 ± 2 cm. Site distribution in different cases is almost equal. 116 of carcinoma patient were presented with palpable lymph node and showed metastasis in 26 (10.32%) cases. Conclusion: FNAC serves as a rapid, economical, and reliable tool for the diagnosis of palpable breast lesions because the cytopathological examination of these lesions before operation or treatment, serves as an important diagnostic modality. Fibroadenoma was the commonest lesion in this study. However, malignancy was detected as the second common lesion.