Outcome of Rapid Intraoperative Diagnosis by Telepathology

Abstract

Amid the nationwide shortage of pathologists, the absence of pathologists is not uncommon in hospitals, especially in less than middle-sized hospitals. Conversely, in breast cancer lesion cases, intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis is imperative to plan the surgical method based on sentinel lymph node biopsy and ascertain the need for additional resection of the stump of the mammary glands. Telepathology, which we introduced in 2007, is a system that facilitates intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis in hospitals without the need for a pathologist. At our hospital, the results obtained with telepathology are not inferior to those obtained with standard intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis and have demonstrated the likelihood of introduction of telepathology in hospitals where pathologists are absent.