Comparison of spatula and cytobrush cytological techniques in early detection of oral malignant and XXXX : a prospective and blinded study.

@entity8407 @entity75 @entity5 @entity189 @entity6349
BACKGROUND: The use of oral cytology to diagnose malignant and @entity75 at an early stage is considered crucial. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnoses of the spatula and the cytobrush techniques compared with the gold standard histopathological findings, analysed according to different diagnostic criteria. METHODS: Cytological smears were obtained from 76 suspicious oral @entity8407 lesions using two techniques: cytobrush plus cell collector and metal spatula. Subsequently, a surgical biopsy was performed on each lesion to achieve a histopathological diagnosis. Evaluation was conducted with respect to three different diagnostic criteria. RESULTS: The sensitivity for diagnosing @entity189 in clinically malignant cases was 89.58% and 60.42% for cytobrush and spatula techniques, respectively. Inclusion of severe @entity6349 cases for 'high-risk' lesions increased the sensitivity up to 96.36% and 78.18% for two techniques, respectively. In @entity75 , malignant and severely @entity6349 cells were diagnosed at a sensitivity of 88.89% in the cytobrush and 55.56% in the spatula techniques. Extending the criteria by defining malignant or any @entity6349 findings as positive, sensitivity was increased to 98.02% and 89.11% for the spatula and the cytobrush techniques, respectively. Specificity for both techniques increased to 100%. The difference between the diagnoses of histopathology and the spatula cytology was statistically significant (P < 0.01), while no such difference was found with the cytobrush technique (P > 0.1). CONCLUSION: The cytobrush, unlike the spatula, is a useful screening instrument for early diagnosis of @entity75 and could therefore contribute to improved @entity5 prognosis.
