Impression Cytology's Reliability as an Effective Method for Ophthalmic Neoplasm Detection

J Pharm Bioallied Sci. 2022 Jul;14(Suppl 1):S537-S540. doi: 10.4103/jpbs.jpbs_114_22. Epub 2022 Jul 13.

Abstract

Background: The current investigation was intended to evaluate the precision of impression cytology and tissue histology in the detection of ocular surface neoplasia.

Materials and methods: We examined the histories of patients detected with ocular surface neoplasia at the Department of Ophthalmology, Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar. All the patients had their impressions cytology and tissue samples taken. The outcomes of both strategies were compared.

Results: There were a total of 55 patients (33 males and 22 females) aged 12-99 years (average age, 51 years). Twenty patients had injuries to the right eye and 35 had injuries to the left eye. Conjunctival-corneal intraepithelial neoplasia (38.2%), squamous cell carcinoma (34.5%), squamous epithelium (10.9%), squamous papilloma (7.3%), conjunctival nevi (7.3%), Along with the most common histological research, malignant melanoma (1.8%). Compared with the histological results, impression cytology showed positive and negative assessment accuracies of 97.4% and 52.9%, respectively. In squamous neoplasms, squamous cell carcinoma exhibited a strong link with histology. The occurrence of dysplastic cells raised suspicion of malignancy.

Conclusion: Because of its increased accuracy in detecting lesions, along with tissue histology, impression cytology exhibits enormous potential in identifying ocular surface neoplasia. However, impression cytology has an undesirable prognostic accuracy, indicating that it is a useful screening tool but cannot be considered as a "gold standard."

Keywords: Cornea–Conjunctiva Intraepithelial; cornea–conjunctiva intraepithelial neoplasia; impression cytology.