Outpatient frozen sections by telepathology in a Veterans Administration medical center.
A relatively simple telepathology system is described for evaluating the margins of excision of cutaneous basal and squamous carcinomas. The system uses a microscope with a built-in television camera, but no eyepieces. The image is projected onto an adjacent monitor and transmitted by T1 line at 768 Kbs to a remote, large screen monitor. The microscope is operated by the surgeon under the telephone direction of the pathologist at the remote site. In a series of 66 cases involving more than 400 individual tissue blocks, we have had only 2 cases with false-negative interpretations and 2 in which the block was not fully displayed on the frozen section. In 15 cases, 1 or more surgical margins were positive, and the surgeon proceeded to excise additional tissue. Our success is attributed to dedicated involvement by the surgeon, very high-quality frozen sections, and the experience of the pathologist.
James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital, and the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Tampa 33612-4798, USA.
P J
PJ
Dawson
J G
JG
Johnson
L J
LJ
Edgemon
C R
CR
Brand
E
E
Hall
G F
GF
Van Buskirk
D000556:Ambulatory Surgical Procedures; D002280:Basal Cell Carcinoma / Q000473:pathology; D002294:Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / Q000473:pathology; D005629:Frozen Sections; D006787:Hospitals, Veterans; D006801:Humans; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D019113:Telepathology