A comparative study on the interpretation of phraseology used in histopathology reports between senders and receivers

Introduction: Histopathology reports should provide clinicians with diagnostically accurate and medically useful information to afford the best management to the patients. Aim and Objectives: To make a comparative assessment of interpretation and use, of the common descriptive phrases found in histopathology reports between clinicians and pathologists, to interpret the degree of certainty among these phrases and to know the preferable phrase by clinicians and the most common phrase used by the pathologists. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was constructed using eight most commonly used descriptive phrases found among 1500 randomly selected histopathology reports from 2017 histopathology register, department of Pathology. This was to compare the interpretation, use and preferences of the descriptive phrases found in histopathology reports. Four groups with 25 members in each were included in the questionnaire and were asked to assign a score from 0 to 5 for these phrases to know the diagnostic level of certainty. The groups were consultant clinicians, consultant pathologists, clinical postgraduate students and pathology post graduate students. Statistical analysis was done by calculating standard deviation, student t-test and by p value. Results: There was a wide variation in individual interpretation of phrases among the groups. The preference of usage of these phrases by pathologists and by clinicians was diverse. Conclusion: The adoption of limited number of descriptive phrases that are mutually understood and acceptable for use by both the pathologists and clinicians is recommended to avoid interpretive ambiguity in histopathology reports.