Evaluation of the accuracy of ultrasonography compared to histopathological findings in diagnosis of infectious maxillofacial swellings.

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of ultrasonography in diagnosis of infectious maxillofacial/swelling. Study Design: Simple Cross Sectional study. Setting: Outpatient Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Unit, Punjab Dental Hospital, Lahore. Period: February 2016 to August 2016. Material & Methods: Conducted on 100 patients. The patients were evaluated with the ultrasound diagnostic modality. The ultrasound interpretation of all the cases was done and best possible diagnosis was made and recorded regarding diagnosis of infectious maxillofacial swellings. The incisional biopsy of every patient was done for histopathology. All findings of ultrasound and histopathology were entered to a proforma. Results: The average age of the patients was 35.81±14.31 years. In this study, 63% patients were males and 37% were females. Out of 100 patients, 70(70%) patients had infectious swelling while 30(30%) did not have infectious swelling. The sensitivity of ultrasonography was calculated as 84.72%, specificity was 67.86%, positive predictive value was 87.14%, negative predictive value was 63.33% and diagnostic accuracy was noted as 80% taking histopathology as gold standard. Conclusion: It was concluded from results of this study that ultrasonography has enough diagnostic accuracy to diagnose infectious swellings of maxillofacial region.