Background and objective :- Fine Needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a simple, minimally invasive screening test and is an essential component of pre-treatment investigation, on which clinical management is based. Although surgical excision of palpable lesions in head and neck lesions is relatively simple, vicinity to other anatomical structures in this region sometimes causes problems. Hence FNAC is a useful diagnostic technique in the management of head and neck lesion. This study is done to evaluate the role of FNAC in palpable head and neck masses and also to study their distribution. Materials and methods :- Study includes 437 patients presenting with palpable head and neck lesions subjected to FNAC at the Department of Pathology, Victoria hospital BMCRIand RI, Bangalore fromJanuary2011to March2011. The age ranged between1-95 yrs with Male to Female ratio of 1:1.57. Out of these 199 cases (45.5%) were from cervical lymph nodes, 141(32.5%) from thyroid, 28 cases(6.4%) from salivary glands. Granulomatous Lymphadenitis was the commonest diagnosis followed by nodular goitre of thyroid, Hashimotos thyroiditis, reactive hyperplasia, metastatic lymph nodes.Out of these 43 cases (9.83%) malignant and 394 cases (90.16%) benign. FNAC was inconclusive in7.8% of cases. Conclusion:- The current study evalutes the role of FNAC as a diagnostic tool in the investigation of head and neck lesions. Tuberculous Lymphadenitis still remains the most common lesion in the head and neck region. __ampersandsignnbsp;