Study of effusion cytology in patients with simultaneous malignancy and ascites.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate sensitivity of effusion cytology in detecting malignancy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Effusion cytology was studied from 37 malignancy associated and 28 non malignancy associated ascitic fluid samples. RESULTS: Out of 65 cases, 44 (67.7%) effusions were reported negative, 15 (23.1%) were positive and 6 (9.2%) were suspicious for malignancy. Thus total 21 effusions (32.3%) were tumour cell positive. All 21 (100%) were true positive, none (0%) was false positive, 28 (63.6%) were true negative and 16 (36.4%) were false negative. Thus ascitic fluid cytology had sensitivity of 56.7% and specificity of 100%. Predictive value of positive test and negative test was 100% and 63.6% respectively. Stomach was the most common primary site of malignancy associated with ascites (11/37 i.e. 29.7%) where as adenocarcinoma was the most common type of malignancy (11/15 i.e.73.3%) in ascitic fluid cytology. CONCLUSION: Ascitic fluid cytology is a simple and useful procedure with sensitivity of 56.7% and should be routinely requested.