Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of salivary glands was performed on 135 cases during a period of three years. Of the total lesions, benign tumours constituted 73 cases (57.1%), malignant tumours 21 cases (15.5%) and tumour like lesions 41 cases (30.4%). The parotid glands were involved in majority of lesions (73.4%) followed by submandibular glands (20.2%) and minor salivary glands (6.30%). The cytological diagnosis was correlated with histopathology in 76 cases. The diagnostic accuracy for benign, malignant and tumour like lesions were 94.7%, 71.4% and 95.8% respectively with an overall accuracy of 90.7%. The sensitivity of FNAC was 78.5% with a specificity of 100%, thereby enabling FNAC to be a useful and simple tool for an early diagnosis of salivary gland tumours.

Key words: FNAC, salivary gland, histopathological correlation