How we assess adequacy of fine-needle aspiration materials intended for flow cytometric analysis

Many articles have been published on the subject of FNA, highlighting the usefulness of flow cytometry in the diagnosis and classification of lymphomas. But occasionally, flow cytometric evaluation fails to detect an abnormal population in a FNA specimen involved by lymphoid neoplasm. Sampling errors (poor viability, peripheral blood contamination and hypocellular specimens) are the major reasons of this failure. In our laboratory we use a simple, fast and cost-effective approach to assess adequacy of FNA materials and in this paper, we describe this procedure with giving some examples of interpretations of our results.