J Korean Surg Soc.  2002 Dec;63(6):445-448.

Frozen Section Diagnosis of Breast Lesions

• Kim HJ
• Park WC
• Park G
• Jung SS

Abstract

PURPOSE: Frozen sections of breast specimens can be used to determine malignancy in a suspected lesion of the breast during operation. However, this procedure always has a potential risk of reporting a false positive or negative. This study was performed to evaluate the accuracy of the frozen section diagnosis of breast lesions.
METHODS
A retrospective study to comparing the results of frozen and paraffin, section diagnosis was undertaken.
RESULTS
178 frozen breast section diagnoses were made between January 1995 and December 1996 at Kangnam St. Mary hospital. There were no false positive reports (0%) but 3 false negative reports (1.7%). The causes of a false negative were sampling error in 2 cases and interpretation error in the other. The sensitivity and specificity of the frozen section diagnosis were 94.5 and 99.2%, respectively.
CONCLUSION
Despite the high sensitivity and specificity of the breast specimen frozen section diagnosis, care should be taken when making a decision on the frozen section diagnosis due to the possibility of false negative results.

Keyword

Breast; Frozen section; Breast cancer

MeSH Terms

Breast Neoplasms
Breast*
Diagnosis*
Frozen Sections*
Paraffin
Retrospective Studies
Selection Bias
Sensitivity and Specificity
Paraffin