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Introduction: Malignant pleural effusion is recognized as the second most common cause of exudative pleural effusion. Thoracentesis and cytological examinations are regarded as simple procedures that can be performed easier than biopsy presenting less pain and danger. Hence, this study aimed to compare the results of malignant pleural fluidcytology and pathology of effusions in order to determine an appropriate method for malignant pleural effusion dignosis. Methods: The design of this study was a cross-sectional analytical survey of all pleural puncture samples (obtained from 1383-1393) which were diagnosed malignant via cytologic or pathologic analysis in the pathology department of Shahid Sadoughi hospital. After the required data were collected by a questionnaire, SPSS software( ver. 19) was applied via Chi- square and fisher’ s exact tests in order to analyze the study data. Results: Out of 61 malignant pleural effusion cases, 31 (50.8%) were males and 30 (49.2%) were females. 39 cases (63.9%) were reported to have positive cytology results and 56 cases were reported to have positive (91.8%) pleuralneedle biopsies. Biopsy and cytology (55.7% of cases) were matched in regard with malignancy diagnosis. However,within 27 cases this correspondence was not observed between cytology and pathology results. In general, 22 (36.1%) biopsies and 5 (8.2%) cytologies were reported to be positive . Conclusion: The study results revealed that pleural fluid cytology can be considened as a noninvasive and rapid diagnostic method in order to diagnose malignant pleural effusions. The diagnostic efficiency of this method can be improved via repeating pleural fluid cytology.

Keywords: Cytology, Malignant pleural effusion, Pleural biopsy

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