Needle aspiration biopsy, a technique described almost 50 years ago, has been vastly underutilized in this country but not in Scandinavia. Aspiration biopsy is used not for screening but for diagnoses of palpable or radiographic lesions. The simple technique may be undertaken in the physician's office with a 22-gauge needle and syringe or the special Scandinavian model illustrated in the text. The aspirates are either air-dried or fixed and stained according to Papanicolaou.
This volume, fourth in a series primarily devoted to exfoliative cytology, deals with salivary glands, neck, breast, and lungs. The chapter on salivary glands is fascinating, although rarely in practice are there enough patients to familiarize the cytopathologist with cell types. Lymph-node aspiration, often from multiple nodes, has proved highly reliable and often has eliminated the need of surgery. Transthoracic aspiration of lung neoplasms has become a useful adjuvant to respiratory cytology, making the exploratory thoracotomy with