An original protocol for standardized histopathology reporting of prostate carcinoma

Standardized histopathology reporting represents the most effective approach to the diagnosis of malignant tumors. The use of checklists is considered the best single practice in ensuring the completeness of daily reporting and enables the pathologist to provide crucial information, affecting therapeutic decisions. Despite the huge amount of available protocols, a great variability is still found in prostate cancer reports, particularly on the expense of core needle biopsies. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an original reporting system, based on the most recent contributions about prognostic factors of prostate carcinoma. The protocol is designed to provide guidance in formulating histopathology reports, by using three different checklists, each devoted to a single kind of specimen (needle biopsy, TURP/simple prostatectomy, radical prostatectomy). Before introducing this protocol in daily practice we tested its effectiveness on a series of cases undergone conventional, descriptive reporting. The omissions in conventional reports and the differences between the two systems enabled us to confirm the value of our method. Despite an additional workload for the pathologist, this standardized reporting system allows the urologist to easily obtain significant prognostic data, select the patients to be treated and predict the clinical outcome after surgery.