Introduction:

in the era of personalized treatment of lung cancer, accurate tumor typing is of vital importance. Cytological studies such as bronchial brushing are often the only way to establish the diagnosis.

Objective:

to evaluate the efficacy of cytological typing of lung cancer with bronchial brushing without the use of immunohistochemical techniques.

Methods:

an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted at the "Arnaldo Milián Castro" Hospital of Villa Clara Province during the period from January 2017 to December 2019; a sample of 104 patients with concurrent bronchial brushing and endobronchial biopsy positive for lung cancer was included. Cytohistological concordance in lung cancer typing was evaluated and the effectiveness of cytological diagnosis for each subtype was determined.

Results:

the subtype reported by brushing and endobronchial biopsy one were concordant in 75% of the cases. Among the discordant cases, squamous carcinomas misclassified as adenocarcinomas predominated. Inclassified specimens constituted 21%. The effectiveness in typing was 85% in adenocarcinomas, 87% in squamous carcinomas and 94% in small cell lung carcinomas.

Conclusions:

bronchial brushing is an effective method for lung cancer typing. The diagnosis based on light microscopic morphology allows classification of a high percentage of cytological samples and the results are optimal with the joint evaluation of bronchial brushing and endobronchial biopsy.

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