Background and Aim: Frozen section is a common intraoperative practice with the aim of determining the lesion as benign or malignant. The aim of this study was the comparison between diagnostic results of cytology and frozen section with intraoperative histopathology in Zahedan Ali Ebne Abitaleb hospital between 2007 and 2008.

  Materials and Methods: In this prospective and analytical study the diagnostic value of intraoperative cytology and frozen section was applied to 100 consecutive biopsies. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were used as statistical tools for comparison, using routine histopathological examination as the gold standard. We used kappa and chi-square tests for statistical analysis using SPSS 14 software. P<0.05 was taken as the significant level.

  Results: Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values in intraoperative cytology were 70.5%, 93.75%, 92.3% and 75% respectively and for frozen section these were 58.8%, 100% , 100% and 69.6% respectively. There was a significant statistical agreement between these two methods (P=0.001).

  Conclusion: The obtained data confirms the value of intraoperative cytology in the diagnosis of all mass lesions. This method can also be used as an alternative technique to frozen section in cases where there are no technical requisites or where the specimen is tiny and unfreezable.