Table 1

Comparison of results of the new THFV with those with conventional hypodermic needles.

Feature

New FNAB needle device (5 by each of 4 CP-Total 20)

Hypodermic needle (5 by each of 4 CP-Total 20)

Cellularity of direct smears

Moderate to marked (Figure 6c)

Mild to hypocellular (Figure 6f)

Density of tissue fragments in cell block

Moderate to marked (Figure 6a,b)

Mild to hypocellular (Figure 6d,e)

Tissuecrit^¶ (Figure 5)

70–100 μl (Mean 87, SD 10)*

17–30 μl (Mean 24, SD 4)*

Technical ease§

1–2

2–3

DS, direct smear, CP, cytopathologists, SD, standard deviation.

^¶Volume of tissue microfragments procured with FNAB procedure and rinsed in CytoRich Red^® fixative (AutoCyte Inc, Elon College, NC) for cell block preparation after preparing direct cytology smears. The tissue microfragments were compacted as sediments under gravity for fixed duration (Figure 5).

*p value < .0001, Student t-test.

§Scale of 1 (easy) to 5 (difficult).

Shidham et al. BMC Clinical Pathology 2007 7:2   doi:10.1186/1472-6890-7-2