Accuracy of Frozen Section with Histopathological Report in an Institute

Frozen section helps in rapid intra-operative diagnosis. It is commonly used during surgical procedures to detect malignancy so that modifications of surgery can be decided at the time of surgery on the table. Frozen section is also performed for evaluation of surgical margins and detection of lymph node metastasis. In addition it is applied for detection of unknown pathological processes.The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy of frozen section diagnosis in comparison to gold standard histopathological diagnosis and to find concordance and discordance rate of frozen section with histopathological report.

This was a cross sectional study of 41 frozen section samples done in the department of pathology of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences from September 2014 to August 2015. All frozen section samples with their permanent tissue samples sent for final histopathological evaluation were included in the study.

The overall accuracy of frozen section diagnosis was 97%. The sensitivity was 94%, specificity was 87%, positive predictive value was 90% and negative predictive value was 93%. The concordance rate was 90.2% and the discordance rate was 9.8%.

The results of frozen section varied in different organ systems and the common cause of discrepancy in our study were the gross sampling error and the interpretational error.