Introduction: With growing awareness in the general population, patients with breast lumps are commonly approaching the clinicians. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is accepted as the most sensitive, safe and cost effective procedure for diagnosing lesions of breast. Proliferative diseases of breast (PBD) encompass a number of histologic lesions having a variable risk factor for the development of carcinoma. One approach to resolve the diagnostic difficulties posed by PBD on FNAC has been to apply an objective scoring system proposed by Masood et al [1]. Materials and Methods: A two year prospective study of 350 cases was conducted. Fine needle aspiration procedure, fixation & staining were performed by standard procedures. Cytological scoring by Modified Masood et al scoring system and correlation between cytological scoring category & histological diagnosis was done. Results: Adequacy of FNAC was 94.3% (330/350). Out of 330 cases, 280 were neoplastic and 50 were non-neoplastic. Cytological scoring was done on all 280 cases but histology was available in total 217 cases. Cytohistological correlation of neoplastic lesions was observed in 94.5% cases using cytological scoring system. Conclusion: FNAC is accepted as the most sensitive, specific, accurate, safe and cost effective procedure for diagnosing lesions of breast preoperatively and avoiding unnecessary surgical interventions like diagnostic excision or incisional biposy. The scoring system was useful in aspirates with cytodiagnosis of proliferative breast disease with atypia, as it helped in separating out a proportion of non-atypical cases. It should be implemented in routine cytological reporting.

Keywords: Biopsy; Fine-Needle; Risk Factors; Fibrocystic Breast Disease; Cytodiagnosis.