Work overview

Section 02 of 05

Materials and methods

Validation of the International Academy of Cytology Yokohama System for Reporting Breast Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytopathology

Shyamala Gowri, Banushree CS, Valli Priyaa, and Simon D Dasiah · 2026

Contents

Section 02 of 05

  1. 01Introduction
  2. 02Materials and methods
  3. 03Results
  4. 04Discussion
  5. 05Conclusions
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Work overview

Section 2 of 5

Materials and methods

Shyamala Gowri, Banushree CS, Valli Priyaa, and Simon D Dasiah · about 1 minutes

Original source ↗

This study was conducted in the Department of Pathology, Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, Puducherry, using retrospective consecutive cases over a period of three years, after approval from the IRC and IEC. Consecutive cases of breast FNAC with histopathological follow-up were included in the study. Cases with no histopathological report, inadequate clinical details, or inadequate follow-up were excluded. A total of 63 cases were included. The FNAC details were retrieved from the investigation forms. The clinical and imaging details were collected from the FNAC investigation forms and histopathology request forms. The cytology slides of all breast lesions were retrieved from the filing section, and cytology grading was performed by two independent pathologists using the IAC Yokohama classification into five diagnostic categories: insufficient/inadequate (code 1), benign (code 2), atypical (code 3), suspicious of malignancy (code 4), and malignant (code 5). The results were further compared with the histopathology reports in order to validate the diagnostic importance of the Yokohama classification.

Statistical analysis

Data entry was done using an MS Excel sheet and analyzed using SPSS software version 20. The FNAC cases were categorized into five categories as per the IAC Yokohama classification and correlated with the histopathology reports. The ROM was calculated for each category as the number of malignant cases confirmed histologically. Using the histological diagnosis as the gold standard, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated.

All procedures performed in the current study were approved by the Institute Research and Ethics Committee (reference number No. 537/IEC-38/PP-35/2023, dated 05.09.2023) in accordance with the revised 2024 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Formal written informed consent was not required, as a waiver was granted by the appropriate Institute Research Ethics Committee.