Background: Liquid Based Cytology (LBC) is defined as a method of preparing cytological specimens for microscopic evaluation in which the patient’s aspirated specimen is suspended in a liquid medium, which is used to produce a thin layer of cells. The objective of our study was to prove the efficacy of Manual Liquid Based Cytology (MLBC) over Conventional Smear Cytology (CS) in Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) samples including body fluids.

 Methods: In this comparative study 100 FNA samples from various anatomical sites were assessed by both MLBC and CS technique under the criteria of cellularity, background, cellular preservation, nuclear preservation. These criteria are evaluated by Kruskal-Wallis test and p-value <0.001 is considered as statistically significant. 

Result: MLBC technique shows better results as compare to CS in terms of cellularity and cellular preservation (p-value < 0.001) whereas MLBC doesn’t show statistically significant difference in background (p-value = 0.412) and in nuclear preservation (p-value = 0.567).

Conclusion: This study though shows that MLBC is safe and less time-consuming technique, however it doesn’t offer any diagnostic superiority over CS in the evaluation of FNA samples. We recommend CS as a gold standard technique with MLBC used as a supportive procedure in some cases.

Keywords: Manual Liquid-based Cytology; Conventional Cytology; FNA Samples and Body Fluids.