[Histologic classification of lung cancers and reproducibility of diagnoses based on 10 years' autopsy material]

Reviewing autopsy records of a ten-year period in the Department of Pathology of Szolnok County Hospital 1607 lung cancer cases were detected, in 1213 of which histological reexamination could be performed. The reproducibility of main histological groups was 73.4%, highest of all in small cell lung cancer. The cause of the relatively low reproducibility rate can be first of all the considerably changeable histological appearance and the frequency of transitional forms between terminally differentiated tumor types. One must not even leave lower diagnostic accuracy of frozen sections out of consideration, the basic method of first diagnosis. The light microscopic heterogeneity and transitional histological forms have been analysed in this article.