Background:Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of oral and maxillofacial region has not been widely utilized for diagnosis due to diversity of lesion types, heterogeneity of cell populations and difficulties in reaching and aspirating these lesions.Aim:Our aim was to demonstrate the effectiveness of this cheap and simple procedure for the diagnosis of tumor and tumor like lesions of oral and maxillofacial region. In addition, we sought to highlight probable causes of errors in the cases showing lack of correlation between cytological and histological diagnoses.Materials and Methods:The study was conducted on 50 patients of all age groups with various palpable lesions in the oromaxillofacial region. A comparison between cytological and histological diagnosis was done wherever biopsy material was available.Results:The rate of unsatisfactory FNA was 4%. There were six false negative cases but no false positive case. The sensitivity of our study ranged from 77.7 to 75% including and excluding the suspicious cases, respectively. Specificity and positive predictive value was 100%.Conclusion:FNAC is a minimally invasive, highly accurate and cost-effective procedure for the assessment of patients with oromaxillofacial lesions. When applied in a proper manner, FNAC can help avoid a surgical biopsy in many cases.

Histoplasma is a dimorphic fungus that primarily involves the lungs and the environmental reservoir is soil. It has emerged as an important opportunistic fungal infection in immunocompromised patients. Six cases of histoplasmosis with variable clinical presentations diagnosed either on cytology or histopathology are discussed - three were HIV-positive. The possibility of histoplasmosis should always be borne in mind, especially in immunocompromised patients, as it can have variable clinical presentations.

A rare occurrence of an omphalomesenteric duct cyst in an exomphalos minor sac is reported herein. The noteworthy points in this case were an unusual presentation of the rarest variety of umbilical cord cyst. The tapering intra-abdominal end of the cyst was found to be attached to the ileal mesentry, thereby simulating a herniating mesenteric cyst till the histolopathological report resolved the issue.

Tumors of salivary gland are very uncommon in children and comprise of <5% of all salivary gland tumors. Most of these neoplasms originate in the parotid gland with 10-15% arising from the submandibular, sublingual, and minor salivary glands. We report a case of sialoblastoma in an 8-year-old male child who presented with a history of slowly progressive swelling of the parotid gland since birth, which was soft to firm in consistency and mobile in all directions. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a well encapsulated tumor located in the superficial lobe of the left parotid gland. Fine needle aspiration was performed, which revealed a parotid tumor with closest resemblance to sialoblastoma. Superficial parotidectomy was performed. The histopathology confirmed the diagnosis of sialoblastoma. Sialoblastoma should always be considered when the lesion is known or suspected to be congenital.

Therapeutic, Level IV.