The frozen section procedure is a pathological laboratory procedure to perform rapid microscopic analysis of a specimen. It is used most often in oncological surgery. The technical name for this procedure is cryosection. The microtome device that cold cuts thin blocks of frozen tissue is called a cryotome.
The quality of the slides produced by frozen section is of lower quality than formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue processing. While diagnosis can be rendered in many cases, fixed tissue processing is preferred in many conditions for more accurate diagnosis.
The intraoperative consultation is the name given to the whole intervention by the pathologist, which includes not only frozen section but also gross evaluation of the specimen, examination of cytology preparations taken on the specimen (e.g. touch imprints), and aliquoting of the specimen for special studies (e.g. molecular pathology techniques, flow cytometry). The report given by the pathologist is often limited to a "benign" or "malignant" diagnosis, and communicated to the surgeon operating via intercom. When operating on a previously confirmed malignancy, the main purpose of the pathologist is to inform the surgeon if the resection margin is clear of residual cancer, or if residual cancer is present at the resection margin. The method of processing is usually done with the bread loafing technique. But margin controlled surgery (CCPDMA) can be performed using a variety of tissue cutting and mounting methods, including Mohs surgery.
The frozen section procedure as practiced today in medical laboratories is based on the description by Dr Louis B. Wilson in 1905. Wilson developed the technique from earlier reports at the request of Dr William Mayo, surgeon and one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic Earlier reports by Dr Thomas S. Cullen at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore also involved frozen section, but only after formalin fixation, and pathologist Dr William Welch, also at Hopkins, experimented with Cullen's procedure but without clinical consequences.
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This course will describe methods underlying translational approaches from disease modeling and characterization to therapeutic applications. The presented techniques will be complemented by hands-on
Presentation of the diverse techniques to prepare samples for bright field microscopy, as well as procedures for standard histology stains and proteins detection with observation of tissues under micr
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Surgical pathology is the most significant and time-consuming area of practice for most anatomical pathologists. Surgical pathology involves gross and microscopic examination of surgical specimens, as well as biopsies submitted by surgeons and non-surgeons such as general internists, medical subspecialists, dermatologists, and interventional radiologists. The practice of surgical pathology allows for definitive diagnosis of disease (or lack thereof) in any case where tissue is surgically removed from a patient.
Mohs surgery, developed in 1938 by a general surgeon, Frederic E. Mohs, is microscopically controlled surgery used to treat both common and rare types of skin cancer. During the surgery, after each removal of tissue and while the patient waits, the tissue is examined for cancer cells. That examination dictates the decision for additional tissue removal. Mohs surgery is the gold standard method for obtaining complete margin control during removal of a skin cancer (complete circumferential peripheral and deep margin assessment - CCPDMA) using frozen section histology.
Histopathology (compound of three Greek words: ἱστός histos 'tissue', πάθος pathos 'suffering', and -λογία -logia 'study of') refers to the microscopic examination of tissue in order to study the manifestations of disease. Specifically, in clinical medicine, histopathology refers to the examination of a biopsy or surgical specimen by a pathologist, after the specimen has been processed and histological sections have been placed onto glass slides. In contrast, cytopathology examines free cells or tissue micro-fragments (as "cell blocks").
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