Aparna Behura
BACKGROUND Traditional approach to pathological diagnosis includes histopathological examination of paraffin sections stained with a variety of histochemical techniques. These routine approaches may be disappointing at times in differentiating benign from malignant lesions and occasionally fail to render a precise diagnosis. There has been a growing interest in the study of DNA and proliferation markers. One of the most recent studies is on Nucleolar Organiser Regions (NORs) using a simple silver reduction technique (AgNOR) method.1 Aim of the Study- This study was conducted to correlate cytological and histopathological diagnosis of breast lumps, to categorise lesions as benign or malignant and to evaluate the AgNOR counts in differentiating benign and malignant tumours. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty-four patients referred to Department of Surgery in Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh were screened for this study. The study was conducted from April 2000 to September 2001 over a period of 17 months. Patients were counseled, and an informed consent was taken. Upon enrolment and clinical examination, the patients were subjected to FNAC of breast and lymph node, if present and surgical excision with histopathology wherever possible. The data is presented as mean and standard deviation. All the observations of AgNOR count were statistically evaluated by using students' 't' test. RESULTS In our study, 80 (95.2%) cases were female and remaining 4 (4.8%) cases were male. There were 32 (38.1%) cases of benign lesions and 52 (61.9%) were malignant lesions. The range of AgNOR counts in benign lesions were found to be 1.9-3.2 (2.3???0.26). The range of AgNOR counts in malignant lesions was found to be 4.9-6.8 (5.37???0.3). There was significant statistical difference (p < 0.005) between AgNOR counts in benign and malignant lesions. CONCLUSION This study concludes that AgNOR counts and dispersion pattern of AgNOR dots have a diagnostic value in distinguishing benign from malignant lesions of breast.
