PURPOSE - Since 2003, the Korean Society of Pathologists (KSP) has been officially providing medical advisory services (MAS). We reviewed the cases submitted to the KSP between 2003 and 2014.
MATERIALS AND METHODS - In total, 1950 cases were submitted, most by private health insurance companies.
The main purposes of the consultations were to clarify the initial diagnoses and to assign a proper disease classification code. We comprehensively reviewed 1803 consultation cases with detailed information.
RESULTS - In spite of some fluctuations, the number of submitted cases has been significantly increasing over the 12 study years. The colon and rectum (40. 3%), urinary bladder (14. 2%), and stomach (6. 9%) were the three most common tissues of origin. The most common diagnoses for each of the three tissues of origin were neuroendocrine tumor (50. 7%), non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma (70. 7%), and adenocarcinoma (36. 2%). Regardless of the tissue of origin, NET of the digestive system was the most common diagnosis (419 of 1,803).
CONCLUSIONS - In the current study, we found that pathologic consultations associated with private health insurance accounted for a large proportion of the MAS. Coding of the biologic behavior of diseases was the main issue of the consultations. In spite of the effort of the KSP to set proper guidelines for coding and classification of tumors, this review revealed that problems still exist and will continue to be an important issue.
Journal of pathology and translational medicine. 2015 Nov 17 [Epub ahead of print]
Min Hye Jang, Geon Kook Lee, Han Seong Kim, Wan Seop Kim
Department of Pathology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. , Department of Pathology, National Cancer Center, Goyang, Korea. , Department of Pathology, Inje University College of Medicine, Goyang, Korea. , Department of Pathology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.