title: Intraoperative frozen section consultation: an analysis of accuracy in a teaching hospital.
abstract: This is a retrospective quality assurance study of all frozen sections done at The Aga Khan University Hospital during a six year period (1986 to 1991). There were 1,031 frozen sections out of a cumulative total of 42,985 surgical specimens (2.39%). Nine hundred and severity-six (94.66%) were concordant. In 92 (8.9%) fresh specimens were brought from other hospitals of Karachi, in 37 cases (3.58%) the diagnosis was deferred till the evaluation of permanent paraffin sections and 18 (1.74%) were discordant with 7 (0.67%) false positive and 11 (1.06%) false negative. Among the discordant cases, 9 were attributed to misinterpretation, 7 due to sampling errors and 2 due to technical reasons. Some of these errors might have been avoided, but appear to be an irreducible minimum.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Aijaz
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Muzaffar
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Hussainy
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pervez
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Hasan
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sheikh
mesh_terms: D005629:Frozen Sections / Q000592:standards*; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007432:Intraoperative Period; D010154:Pakistan; D010340:Pathology, Surgical / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies