Frozen section analysis of breast biopsy specimens.

The authors compared the diagnoses from intraoperative frozen section consultation with the final diagnosis using permanent tissue sections from 179 breast biopsy specimens. Of these, there were 175 correct diagnoses (97.8%), two diagnoses were incorrect (1.1%) and two were inconclusive (1.1%). The distribution of the correct diagnoses within each particular group of breast diseases proves that in the invasive tumor group the diagnosis on FS was correct for 101 patients (98.1%) and incorrect for two patients (1.9%). In the fibrocystic breast disease group, diagnoses correlated for 42 patients (97.7%), whereas the problem in diagnosing the extent of epithelial proliferation appeared for only one patient (2.3%) and was categorized as an inconclusive diagnosis. Of 4 incorrect and inconclusive diagnoses, two occurred as a result of sampling nonrepresentative tissue specimens and two as a result of diagnostic misinterpretation. This study has shown that for the determination of the histological type of carcinoma, FS is not of significant morphological value since correct diagnoses were made for only 60% of the patients.