Conformity of Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy (FNAB) and Core Needle Biopsy (CNB) in peripheral lung tumor patients: A cross-sectional study

Background: The problem of establishing lung tumor diagnostics is a challenge for clinicians, especially pulmonologists, in determining a definitive diagnosis of a lung tumor. Objective: Analyzing the conformity of anatomical pathology results between fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and core needle biopsy (CNB) materials in peripheral lung tumors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from July 2019 to December 2020 with 66 participants. Participants were examined for CNB and FNAB, in which the results of these examinations were compared for conformity. Statistical analysis used the Kappa test with p < 0.05. Result: Most participants' tumor size was >70 mm, with FNAB results showing malignant category (39.5%), non-malignant (40.0%), and undiagnosed (38.9%; p = 0.757). Meanwhile, CNB examination showed a tumor size of >70 mm that was categorized into malignant (40.4%) and non-malignant (33.3%; p = 0.510). Most tumors were located in the right superior lobe that had FNAB results in the malignant (39.5%), non-malignant (30.0%) and undiagnosed (27.8%; p = 0.306) categories. The CNB examination also showed that most tumors were located in the right superior lobe, which had resulted in the category of malignant (34.4%), non-malignant (26.7%), and undiagnosed (75.0%; p = 0.240). Conformity of anatomical pathology results from FNAB and CNB subject such as malignancy category of 35 participants (74.5%), non-malignancy of 7 participants (53.8%) and undiagnosed of 4 participants (16.7%) with an accuracy of 69.69% (Κ = 0.43; p = 0.001). Conclusion: There is a conformity between the anatomical pathology results from FNAB and CNB materials for the diagnosis of lung tumors. CNB showed better results in the detection of anatomical malignancy and specimen adequacy.