[Frozen section telepathology in the clinical routine of a breast cancer center]

For an intraoperative frozen section service, the period from surgeon's sample excision to the time of transmitting the diagnosis by the pathologist, should not last longer than 20 min. In a period of 16 months we performed 389 frozen sections by telepathology (298 patients) in our breast cancer center, using the Leica telepathology system (TPS 1.5). In 173 out of the 389 sections, an invasive carcinoma was diagnosed (312 frozen sections with the aim to verify malignancy and 77 to verify a tumor-free retroareolar resection margin). The overall error rate amounted to 7 out of 389 sections (about 2%; false-negative in 5 cases, false-positive in 2 cases) and is equivalent to the error rate without telepathology. The mean time for diagnosis per case was 15 min. For the future, it is desirable that hospitals without their own pathologists also perform frozen sections within an adequate time by using telepathology systems.