Errors rates in reporting prostatic core biopsies

Jon Oxley (1) , Chandan Sen (2)

1 Cellular Pathology
2 Cellular Pathology

Aims: To evaluate the false negative and false positive error rates both in a screening and non-screening population. Methods and Results: A total of 4192 prostatic biopsies were reported in a six year period by 15 consultant histopathologists, two of whom had an interest in uropathology and were deemed specialists (JO and CS) All biopsies were reviewed prior to the multidisciplinary team (MDT) meeting. The overall false negative rate was 1.7% (screening 2.1%, non-screening 1.5%). The overall false positive rate was 0.5%; (screening 0.9%, non-screening 0.4%). These error rates varied amongst pathologists with a false negative rate ranging from 0 to 9.3% and a false positive rate ranging from 0 to 3.8%. Conclusion: The false negative rate was three times greater than the false positive rate showing that detecting significant pathology is far greater in the negative biopsies. More errors occurred in the screening population than the non-screened population. The consultants making the most errors were non specialists but the specialists also made false negative errors, suggesting that just using specialist reporting alone would not have eradicated errors.

Mots clés: Medicine

Jon Oxley, Chandan Sen. Errors rates in reporting prostatic core biopsies. Histopathology, 2011, 58 (5), pp.759. ⟨10.1111/j.1365-2559.2011.03794.x⟩. ⟨hal-00626291⟩