Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy of gall bladder malignancies

Purpose: To establish the safety and efficacy of US-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) in gall bladder malignancies. Material and Methods: 142 patients suspected to have gall bladder malignancies underwent FNAB under real-time US guidance. The most common sonographic appearances were a mass filling or replacing the gall bladder (n= 98), focal or diffuse wall thickening (n=25) and intraluminal polypoidal mass (n=19). FNAB was performed with a 0.7-mm spinal needle using a free-hand technique. Results: On initial FNAB, 115 patients were diagnosed to have malignancy. In the remaining 27 patients, aspirates on first FNAB showed either inflammatory pathology (n=14) or the sample was suspicious of malignancy (n=7), or the aspirates were non-representative (n=6). Of these 27 patients, 13 underwent repeat FNAB because of the high suspicion of malignancy and 12 of them showed malignancy. The FNAB diagnosis of inflammatory disease of 7 patients was confirmed on subsequent surgery and 8 patients were lost to follow-up. Thus, a total of 127/142 were diagnosed to have gall bladder malignancy. Adenocarcinoma was the most common malignancy (89.76%). No procedure-related complications were encountered. Conclusion: US-guided FNAB is a safe and accurate technique to diagnose gall bladder malignancy. Either a repeat FNAB or surgical biopsy is recommended when the suspicion of malignancy is high and the initial FNAB is negative.