Background and purpose: Practical use of cytology in diagnosis of skin cancers is limited due to lack of information regarding its reliability and accuracy. This study assessed the diagnostic value of scraping cytology in superficial skin cancers. Materials and methods: We compared papanicolaou stained glass slides of scraped samples of 60 suspicious skin lesions to H and E stained histologic sections for the diagnosis and typing of malignancy. The performance of cytodiagnosis was assessed by determining its specificity, sensitivity and accuracy. Results: Histological examination showed 50% malignancy among the patients. Cytology agreed with the diagnosis of the nature of lesions (93.3%) and in 56.60% of the histology of skin lesions. Misdiagnosis occurred in 6.7% of the cases. Sensitivity and specificity of scraping cytodiagnosis in malignant cases were 90% and 96.6%, respectively. The false negative rate was 10% (3.30) and the false positive rate was 3.4% (1.30). Conclusion: According to this study scraping cytology could be a reliable and simple method for diagnosis and typing of superficial skin cancers, but further pooled studies should be done to verify its true accuracy.

Keywords: Skin cancer, Cytology, diagnosis, scrape

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