Cytologic evaluation of ocular lesions

Abstract

Evaluation was made of ocular cytologic specimens from 59 patients with clinically suspicious lesions: 47 conjunctival scrapes, 10 vitreous fluid aspirates, 1 corneal scrape and 1 iris cyst aspirate. Tissue correlation was available for 30 of the 59 cases. A control group of 20 normal conjunctival scrapes was also evaluated. Cytomorphologic criteria for normal ocular specimens, inflammatory lesions, premalignant lesions and malignant lesions are presented. These lesions included dysplasia (seven cases), carcinoma in situ (four cases), squamous cell carcinoma (five cases), Meibomian gland carcinoma (three cases), basal cell carcinoma (two cases), metastatic adenocarcinoma (one case), melanoma (two cases) and retinoblastoma (one case). The remaining lesions were nonspecific inflammatory changes and normal variants. The results of this study indicate that cytologic examination of ocular specimens can be a valuable adjunct in the workup of suspected neoplastic eye lesions.