ACCURACY OF BRONCHIAL WASHING IN DIAGNOSIS OF LUNG CANCER

Lung cancer as the most common cancer leads to 30% and 26% of deaths in men
and women, respectively. Most patients with lung cancer are diagnosed in advanced stages, so their
surgical procedures are not often successful. Therefore, early diagnosis has the key role in treatment and
life expectancy of patients. The aim of this study was to determine sensitivity, specificity, positive and
negative predictive values and accuracy of bronchial washing cytology in comparison with biopsy in
diagnosis of lung cancer.
Materials & Methods: In this study, the diagnostic accuracy of bronchial washing was evaluated on 215
consecutive cases whose bronchial samples were taken in Urmia Imam Khomeini hospital during March
2012- March 2015.
Results: Among 215 bronchial samples, 52 cases (24.2%) were female and 163 cases(75.8%) were male.
Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value and accuracy were 32.1%, 96.47%,
89.65%, 59.85% and 65.06%, respectively.
Conclusion: According to the results, bronchial washing cytology has low sensitivity to diagnose of
lung tumors, so we recommend other cytological procedures such as bronchial brushing or combination
of bronchial washing and bronchial brushing to diagnose lung tumors