TELECYTOLOGY IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF PLEURAL EFFUSION SMEARS
Ayat Elahi Hossein, Ameer Hussein Tabatabaei, Nooriye Sharifi, Marzieh Sadeghian, H Esmaeili, Jafar Bordbar Azari, M Basirnezhad · 2006
Objective Telecytologic diagnosis of pleural effusion smears is potentially useful because it could allow more efficient use of cytopathologist resources and expertise. The purpose of our investigation was to evaluate how well this type of review correlates with a review in which the entire slide is available for examination by the pathologist. Materials and Methods 35 pleural effusion smears with different diagnosis were selected retrospectively. They includ 16 benign, 5 suspicious for malignancy and 14 malignant which were confirmed with two expert cytopathologists. For each slide number 3 to 11 fields containing abnormal cells were digitally imaged. Pathologists reviewed all glass slides and digitized images individually. Diagnoses based on selected digitized images were compared with those based on conventional review. The kappa static, a measure of chance-corrected agreement (reproducibility), was calculated in each setting. Results The interobserver kappa value for the 3 observer for the glass slides was 76%. The interobserver kappa value for the digital images was 67%. Conclusion The disagreement between a pathologist’s glass slide and digital diagnose (mean intraobserver kappa value = 73%) is greater than that for different pathologists reviewing glass slides (mean slide interobserver kappa value= 76%). Overall, intraobserver and interobserver reproducibility of pleural effusion slides (consists of direct smear after centrifugation and cytospin preparation) diagnoses is good to excellent.