Evaluation of the Effectiveness of our Intraoperative Pathology Consultations in a Five-Year Period: A Total of 2.179 Cases

Abstract

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: Intraoperative consultations (IOCs) or frozen section (FS), which meet the urgent need for diagnosis during an operation, are widely used for the management of surgical operations. Inquiries that are most frequently made in IOCs include the presence/absence of a mass, malignant-benign differentiation of the mass and lesion continuity at the surgical margin. IOC is the most urgent and difficult area of pathology. Accurate diagnosis rates and sensitivity and specificity values are important clinical quality indicators. We aimed to evaluate the IOC data of our clinic in light of the literature. MATERIAL AND METHOD:The reports of IOCs requested from the Department of Pathology of Ataturk University Faculty of Medicine between 2016 and 2020 and paraffin section (PS) reports of these tissues were retrospectively analyzed. The reports of the same tissues were compared. The results were classified according to age, gender, organ distribution, reasons for IOC request, disagreement between the IOC and PS diagnoses. Data obtained were discussed in light of the literature. RESULTS:A total of 2,179 cases, 70.03% female and 29.97% male, were included in the study. The primary reason for the IOC request (71,2%) was differentiation between masses and malignant-benign lesions. In 94.81% of the cases, diagnoses made during IOCs were confirmed by the PS examination, 3.62% were deferred, and disagreement was observed between IOC and PS examination in 2.5% of cases. In our study, the sensitivity was 95.7%, specificity 99.3%, positive predictive value 99.1%, and negative predictive value 97.2%. CONCLUSION: IOC remains an important diagnostic method in guiding the surgical operation. The high agreement between IOC and PS diagnoses is an important quality indicator. However, it is inevitable to avoid certain technical and interpretation mistakes due to the nature of the process. in our study, high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity values were observed in accordance with the literature. Keywords: Intraoperative Consultation, Frozen Section, Sensitivity, Specificity, Accuracy

Keywords

• Intraoperative Consultation
• Frozen Section
• Sensitivity
• Specificity
• Accuracy

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