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

Abstract: Intraoperative consultations (IOCs), 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. 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. 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. Both reports were compared. The results were classified as age,

gender, organ distribution, reason for IOC request, disagreement between

IOC and PS diagnoses, and paraffin follow-up. A total of 2.179 cases,

70.03% female and 29.97% male, were included in the study. 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%. 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. © 2021 NTMS.

Keywords: Intraoperative Consultation; Frozen Section; Sensitivity;

Specificity; Accuracy.