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Isolation, Culture, Characterization, and Differentiation of Human Muscle Progenitor Cells from the Skeletal Muscle Biopsy Procedure
Published on: August 23, 2019
Common Data Elements for Muscle Biopsy Reporting
Jahannaz Dastgir1, Anne Rutkowski, Rachel Alvarez
1From the Neuromuscular and Neurogenetic Disorders of Childhood Section, Neurogenetics Branch, National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, Maryland (Drs Dastgir and Bonnemann); the Department of Pediatric Neurology, Division of Pediatric Neuromuscular Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York (Dr Dastgir); Cure CMD, Olathe, Kansas (Dr Rutkowski and Mss Alvarez and Cossette); the Department of Pediatrics, Quantitative Health Sciences Section (Drs Yan and Hoffmann), and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Division of Pediatric Pathology (Dr Lawlor and Ms Cossette); Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; the Dubowitz Neuromuscular Centre (Dr Sewry), the Institute of Child Health (Dr Sewry), and Great Ormond Street Hospital (Dr Sewry), University College of London, London, United Kingdom; the Wolfson Centre for Inherited Neuromuscular Diseases, RJAH Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry, United Kingdom (Dr Sewry); the Department of Neurophysiology, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan (Dr Hayashi); and the Department of Neuropathology, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (Dr Goebel).
Context:
There is no current standard among myopathologists for reporting muscle biopsy findings. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has recently launched a common data element (CDE) project to standardize neuromuscular data collected in clinical reports and to facilitate their use in research.
Objective:
To develop a more-uniform, prospective reporting tool for muscle biopsies, incorporating the elements identified by the CDE project, in an effort to improve reporting and educational resources.
Design:
The variation in current biopsy reporting practice was evaluated through a study of 51 muscle biopsy reports from self-reported diagnoses of genetically confirmed or undiagnosed muscle disease from the Congenital Muscle Disease International Registry. Two reviewers independently extracted data from deidentified reports and entered them into the revised CDE format to identify what was missing and whether or not information provided on the revised CDE report (complete/incomplete) could be successfully interpreted by a neuropathologist.
Results:
Analysis of the data highlighted showed (1) inconsistent reporting of key clinical features from referring physicians, and (2) considerable variability in the reporting of pertinent positive and negative histologic findings by pathologists.
Conclusions:
We propose a format for muscle-biopsy reporting that includes the elements in the CDE checklist and a brief narrative comment that interprets the data in support of a final interpretation. Such a format standardizes cataloging of pathologic findings across the spectrum of muscle diseases and serves emerging clinical care and research needs with the expansion of genetic-testing therapeutic trials.
