Moving Toward a Systematic Approach for Reporting Salivary Gland Cytopathology: An Institutional Experience and Literature Review

Context.— Despite the clinical utility of fine-needle aspiration for the diagnosis of salivary pathologies, salivary lesions remain one of the most challenging areas in cytopathology. This is partially because there is no consensus on how to report salivary gland cytopathology, which has resulted in inconsistent terminology among institutions and individual cytopathologists and in confusion in communication among cytopathologists and ordering providers. Objective.— To summarize our experience with an institutional salivary gland cytopathology reporting system, as an initiative to promote collaborative work towards a consensus on a reporting system. Design.— We developed an empirical 6-tier classification reporting system. Slides of 107 salivary gland fine-needle aspirations with subsequent histology slides were reviewed and reclassified using the 6-tier system. The performance of the cytology reporting system was evaluated with the histology diagnoses serving as the gold standard. Results.— Fine-needle as...