Accuracy of frozen section in the diagnosis of ovarian tumours

Abstract

The purpose of our retrospective study was to assess the accuracy of intraoperative frozen section diagnosis compared to final paraffin diagnosis in ovarian tumours at a gynaecological oncology centre in the UK. We analysed 66 cases and observed that frozen section consultation agreed with final paraffin diagnosis in 59 cases, which provided an accuracy of 89.4%. The overall sensitivity and specificity for all tumours were 85.4% and 100%, respectively. The positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were 100% and 89.4%, respectively. Of the seven cases with discordant results, the majority were large, mucinous tumours, which is in line with previous studies. Our study demonstrated that despite its limitations, intraoperative frozen section has a high accuracy and sensitivity for assessing ovarian tumours; however, care needs to be taken with large, mucinous tumours.

Keywords::

• Borderline ovarian tumour
• frozen section
• ovarian neoplasm

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr Maryse Sundaresan, lead Consultant Histopathologist on gynaecological disease, Dr Peter Atkinson, Consultant Pathologist (deceased) and Margaret Chappell Consultant Pathologist (retired) for supplying the photomicrograph images. Also we would like to thank Dr Ketan Gajjar (Clinical Fellow Registrar in gynaecology oncology), Dr Gregory Szymczyk, Dr Annette Zeidman and Dr Mandeep Singh, for helping to search for the data and download relevant articles.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.