DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2015.v03i02.087

Pages: 969-972

Ascites is a common clinical problem confronting physicians and is commonly encountered in many patients with liver diseases, cardiac failure, renal diseases, and malignancies. Currently, differentiation of the fluid by laboratory analysis into malignant and non-malignant ascites has not been fully achieved yet. The aim was to assess the diagnostic accuracy of cytology in the differential diagnosis of ascites. A total of seventy five unselected patients with ascites were studied. Thirty seven of them had malignancy-related ascites (7 males, 30 females), while 38 had non-malignant ascites (18 males, 20 females). Cytology was done for all ascitic fluid samples collected from these patients. Cytology yielded an accuracy of 78.7% and a sensitivity of 56.8%. Hence, it is found that cytology alone may not be too useful in differentiating malignant from non-malignant ascites as its sensitivity is low and so other biochemical parameters may be needed to supplement cytology in the differential diagnosis of ascites.