Introduction: Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a useful diagnostic modality in soft tissue lesions. However an exact cytological diagnosis is often difficult due to constraints of recognizable tissue architectural pattern. Aims/Objectives: 1) To study distribution pattern of various soft tissue lesions at our institute. 2) To assess the utility of FNAC in those cases where biopsy was available. Material and Methods: This is 8 years study of FNAC’s performed in the Department of Pathology, SDM Institute of Medical Sciences and Hospital, Dharwad. Correlating clinical, cytomorphological and imaging modalities, final diagnosis was arrived at. In cases of biopsy, histopathological correlation was carried out. Results: 653 cases FNAC were of soft tissue lesions in which 613 cases (93.88%) were benign and 40 cases (6.12%) were malignant. In benign category, maximum cases were lipoma (85.31%) followed by benign spindle cell lesion (5.38%). In malignant category, maximum cases were small round cell tumor (17.5%) followed by spindle cell sarcoma (15%). Histopathological correlation available in 112 cases with diagnostic accuracy of 99.10%. Our study results were comparable with other studies on FNAC of soft tissue lesions. Conclusion: Fine needle aspiration cytology is an effective and reliable diagnostic tool in categorizing soft tissue lesions pre-operatively for further clinical management. Diagnostic accuracy is increased with correlation of clinical and imaging findings.

Keywords: Soft tissue lesions; FNAC; Histopathology.