engleski

Time consuming and decision making process in frozen section surgical pathology service

The frozen section (intraoperative biopsy) is one of the most important and difficult procedures that the pathologist performs during his/hers practice. In most pathology departments it is performed daily. The aim of this study was to determine the number of frozen sections with regard to surgical departments and diagnoses at the surgical pathology division of the &#171; Ljudevit Jurak&#187; Clinical Department of Pathology of the &#171; Sisters of Charity&#187; University Clinical Hospital in Zagreb, during the period 1998-2004. The data were retrieved from the &#171; Thanatos&#187; program for data archiving, analysed and divided according to department (ORL, general surgery, neurosurgery, urology, gynecology and others) and diagnoses (benign tumor, malignant tumor, other conditions, metastases and description). During the analysed period, the relative frequency of frozen sections rose steadily from 6.25% in 1998 to7.78% (p<0.001). The statistically significant increase was noticed in the number of intraoperative biopsies from the departments of neurosurgery (p<0.001), urology (p<0.001), gynecology (p<0.01) and other departments (p<0.001), while the number of intraoperative biopsies from the surgical deparment decreased significantly (p<0.001). The difference between the number of intraoperative biopsies from the ORL department was not significant. The diagnosis of benign tumor was significantly more frequent in 1998 in comparison to 2004 (p<0.05), as well as the diagnosis of metastases (p<0.001). The number of descriptive answers was significantly higher in 2004 (p<0.001), but the difference in the number of diagnosed malignant tumors and other conditions was not significant. The number of routine, paraffin embedded biopsies that rose through the analysed period was followed by the increased number of frozen sections.

frozen section; surgical pathology

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