Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a valuable adjunct to preoperative screening in the diagnosis of thyroid nodules and has emerged as one of the wellestablished firstline diagnostic techniques. In most cases, it can distinguish between benign and malignant lesions. FNAC is a rapid, efficient, costeffective, relatively painless procedure with a high diagnostic accuracy. It has high rate of sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing thyroid neoplastic lesions. Purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of FNAC in the diagnosis of neoplastic thyroid lesions and confirmation of the diagnosis by histopathological study and report the malignancy risk for FNA of thyroid lesions. The present study was carried out in our institute during the January 2012 to September 2016. This study was a retrospective study and a comparison was drawn between FNAC results and final histological diagnosis. In our study, 745 cases of thyroid FNAC smears were analyzed and cytohistopathological correlation was done in 39 cases of neoplastic lesions. 33 cases werediagnosed as neoplastic lesions by FNAC. The overall surgical yield of malignancy by FNAC was 26.84%. In our study, FNAC diagnosis had 79.84% sensitivity, 97.6% specificity, 6.06% false positive rate, 8.9% false negative rate, and 91.86% accuracy. Hence, FNAC has been proven to be an efficient and guide the clinical treatment of patients with thyroid nodules.

Keywords: CytoHistopathological Correlation; Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology; Thyroid Neoplastic Lesions; Accuracy.