Systematic Review of the Use of Telepathology During Intraoperative Consultation

Objective: To compare studies that used telepathology systems vs conventional microscopy for intraoperative consultation (frozen-section) diagnosis.

Methods: A total of 56 telepathology studies with 13,996 cases in aggregate were identified through database searches.

Results: The concordance of telepathology with the reference standard was generally excellent, with a weighted mean of 96.9%. In comparison, we identified seven studies using conventional intraoperative consultation that showed a weighted mean concordance of 98.3%. Evaluation of the risk of bias showed that most of these studies were low risk.

Conclusions: Despite limitations such as variation in reporting and publication bias, this systematic review provides strong support for the safety of using telepathology for intraoperative consultations.