Obstetrical Clinical Feedback to a Novel Placenta Diagnostic Template

Area of Science:

• Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Pathology
• Clinical Medicine

Background:

• Placental pathology reports often present challenges for clinicians due to clarity and relevance issues.
• Existing diagnostic categories may lack direct clinical applicability in patient management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess obstetric clinicians' perceptions of placental pathology reports.
• To evaluate a novel, annotated placental pathology report template based on Amsterdam criteria.
• To determine if report revisions improve clinical utility and inform patient care.

Main Methods:

• Initial and follow-up surveys were distributed to community obstetric clinicians over 28 months.
• Clinicians provided feedback on current and revised placental pathology report templates.
• The template was iteratively revised based on survey feedback.

Main Results:

• Initially, most clinicians found placental reports not useful (65%).
• A majority (84%) indicated they would modify future care based on placental findings predicting risk.
• Following revisions, clinicians were divided but leaned towards improvement (74% and 54% in follow-up surveys).

Conclusions:

• Placental pathologists must provide diagnoses with comments offering value-added information on outcomes and recurrence.
• Revised reports, despite better organization, had limited clinical utility due to patient anxiety and lack of specific comments.
• Further refinements are necessary to enhance the focus and clinical utility of placental pathology reports.