Head and neck masses commonly occur within the lymph nodes, thyroid, salivary glands and soft tissues mainly from the skin.FNAC is used as a first line of investigation in the diagnosis of such patients. It is an inexpensive, safe, outdoor procedure, with rapid reporting and requires minimal equipments.

Aim:The aim is to assess the prevalence of different types of palpable head and neck swellings and the utility of FNAC in diagnosis of head and neck lesions.

Materials and Methods:The present study included 932 cases of FNACs done on head and neck swellings performed as outdoor procedure at department of Pathology over a 24 months period.Data containing demographic details such as age and gender, cytological findings were retrieved and recorded. Patients with incomplete cytological results and demographic details were excluded from the study.

Results:Therewere 403 (43.24 %) females and 529 (56.76%) males (F:M ratio of 1 : 1.3 ). Age range of the patients was between 4 months to 88 years with mean age of 26.47 years. Highest number of cases was recorded in second and first decades of life with 233 (25.00%) cases and 197 (21.13%) cases respectively. Largest number of aspirates were from lymph nodes, followed by thyroid lesions. Among the lymph node aspirates reactive hyperplasia was the most common cytological finding, tuberculosis and granulomatous lymphadenitis together constitutes 28.64% cases. Colloid goitre was the common cytological diagnosis reported among the thyroid swellings. In malignant category, highest number of cases reported was metastatic carcinoma of lymph nodes.

Conclusion: FNAC is an excellent first line investigative method, for diagnosis of nature of palpable head and neck swellings. In addition to reactive lymphadenopathy, tuberculosis and metastatic carcinoma are important and common causes of cervical lymphadenopathy.