[Roles of pathology laboratories on medical care service and quality assessment system for pathological diagnosis]

In practical medicine, pathologists provide highly specialized medical information (pathological diagnosis) to clinicians. Pathological diagnosis includes histopathology, cytology, intraoperative consultation (rapid diagnosis by frozen section) and autopsy service. In particular, histopathological diagnosis of biopsy specimens, nearly always gives a qualitative diagnosis to unknown pathological process, in other words, a final diagnosis. In addition, pathological diagnosis contributes to supporting medical audit. Thus it is quite important that to establish the quality assessment system for pathological diagnosis which is hard to be judged with the value.