As per the results of the latest study issued in Endoscopy International Open, Crush smear cytology was found to be an extremely sensitive, specific, time-saving and cost-effective diagnose tool for gastrointestinal lesions. It is an added value to the histology to boost the diagnostic accuracy and hasten decision making for lesions management.

This prospective, cross-sectional, single-centre study comprised 451 patients with suspected malignant lesions. About 26.4% of patients had lesions in esophagus and GE junction, 16.6% in the stomach, 5.9% in ampulla & duodenum, and 50.9% in colorectal. The crush cytologic diagnosis was associated with histology to ascertain the diagnostic accuracy. Out of these, 92.9% were considered as malignant lesions and 7.1% as non-malignant.

Crush cytology results portrayed 84.5% patients being positive for malignancy, 8.9 % patients being negative for malignancy and 6.6% of patients being suspicious for malignancy.

In general, sensitivity was 97.3% , specificity was 90 %, positive predictive value was 99.2 %,  negative predictive value was 72.5 % with diagnostic accuracy of 96.9 %. 

Even though crush cytology proved to be efficient diagnostic tool, but it cannot entirely substitute histopathological test concerning specific tumor type and grading, and cases in which cytology is doubtful, Pankaj Desai et al. deduced.