Diagnostic Accuracy of Fine Needle Aspiration in Patients With Salivary Gland Tumors.

Tumors of the salivary glands occupy 0.5-1.2% of cases of head and neck tumors. They are primarily a surgical disease, as their treatment is basically the surgical excision. In this direction and in the context of the differential preoperative diagnosis, in addition to the imaging methods, the fine needle biopsy (FNA) was used, with which cell material is aspirated from the tumor and studied under the microscope. Although an increasing number of papers have been published in the international scientific literature over the last 5 years on the diagnostic accuracy of FNA in salivary glands, many of them are unable to quantify and omit to refer information that could affect the estimated diagnostic accuracy. Such information is for instance the clinical experience of the doctor who performs the FNA and of the one who assess the smear. The aim of this retrospective study is to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of fine needle biopsy in adult patients with salivary gland tumor that underwent a surgical excision in two Oral and Maxillofacial Departments in Northern Greece. The present retrospective study was carried out from 2/2021 to 4/2022 by collecting data from the files of patients who underwent surgery at the Oral and Maxillofacial Clinic of the Theageneio Cancer Hospital of Thessaloniki 1996-2022 and the General Hospital of Thessaloniki G. Papanikolaou 2015-2022. The study was conducted according to the STARD 2015 protocol. FNA contributed significantly to the differential preoperative process in salivary gland diseases. The differential diagnosis of a lesion in benign / malignant preoperatively, with the use of FNA, enables the surgeon for a more beneficial to the patient and oncologically safer planning of the surgery. It is considered important the high sensitivity provided by the examination, as it helps to exclude with sufficient safety the possible malignancy of the tumor located in the salivary gland of the patient.