Utility of endometrial aspiration cytology for screening postmenopausal women for endometrial malignancies

Objective: Endometrial aspiration cytology (EAC) is an acceptable and valuable diagnostic procedure for screening the endometrial status. Objective of this study is to know the utility of this procedure as a screening procedure for detection of endometrial malignancies in postmenopausal women with abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB). Methods: Endometrial aspiration obtained using 5F infant feeding tube attached to 20cc disposable syringe. Endometrial aspiration material was smeared directly on to three clean glass slides.One smear was wet fixed for papanicolau staining and the remaining slides were air dried for Giemsa stain. Smears were reviewed for cytomorphological findings and were correlated with the histopathological findings. Results: 100 postmenopausal women presenting with abnormal uterine bleeding were studied. Age of the patients ranged from 45 to 70 years. In our study, the sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing malignancy on aspiration cytology were 90% and 96.25% respectively. Conclusions: Endometrial aspiration is an effective, useful and a minimally invasive procedure. With an experienced cytologist, it can be used rou-tinely for the screening of postmenopausal women with AUB for endometrial malignancies, provided all the points of discrepancies are taken care of.