Introduction: To study the clinical, cyto morphological features of all pediatric lesions and categorize them as inflammatory, benign and malignant lesions and to correlate with histopathological diagnosis, wherever possible.
Materials and Methods: All lesions in pediatric age group (0-14years) during a period of three years (2016-18) and total of 369 cases are detected clinically or under radiological guidance were included.
Results: Out of 2911 fine needle aspirations during the study period, 369 were aspirations in children of pediatric age group, constituting 12.67% of all aspirations. Repeat aspirations were done in 4 cases, of which 3 cases were from different organs at same time and in one case 2 aspirations were done in 2 month follow up period. Majority of lesions were inflammatory lesions comprising 74.52% (275) of all lesions, followed by neoplastic lesions (12.19%). Nonspecific inflammatory lesions were more common (63.63%) than specific inflammatory lesions (36.36%). Neoplasms comprised 12.19% (45) cases, and about two third of them were benign lesions (60%). Overall, benign lesions constituted 7.31% of all lesions and malignant lneoplasms 4.87%. Highest incidence was seen in 12^th year comprising 15.71% (58 lesions).
Conclusion: FNAC is a rapid, easy, simple, minimally invasive technique well accepted in the adult population and also in pediatric age group. However with diagnostic accuracy of 91.30% in the present study as well as in previous studies, FNAC can be a reliable first line investigation in children. From this study it was clear that there is more widespread utilization of FNAC in children especially in enlarged cervical lymph nodes.