During a period of 5 years (1998-2002), 125 lymphoma cases consisting of 78 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), 38 Hodgkin's disease (HD) and 9 NHL/HD were diagnosed by fine needle aspiration (FNA) cytology. In FNA smears of NHL, the 2 most commonly used antibodies for immunocytochemical staining were CD3 (29 cases) and CD20 (33 cases). A case was considered positive if>or = 50% of cells showed a positive reaction.