Role of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of testes in male infertility

Abstract

Fine needle aspiration of the testis, which is minimally traumatic, has questioned the need of a more invasive open biopsy in the evaluation of male infertility. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as compared to open testicular biopsy in the evalu-ation of male infertility by correlating diagnoses from tes-tis FNA cytology with biopsy histology. We have also studied the necessity of bilateral or unilateral FNACs in the workup of the infertile man. This study was a prospec-tive study of 57 infertile men in whom bilateral testicular fine needle aspiration as well as testicular biopsy was done. The correlation between the 2 methods was 91.9%. Dis-crepancies between cytology and histology were mainly the result of insufficient smears. These data also suggest that bilateral FNACs and biopsies can be restricted to patients in whom there is appreciable difference in tes-ticular size or consistency.

Keywords

• Needle aspiration
• testis
• infertility
• histology
• cytology.