Contamination of histology biopsy specimen - a potential source of error for surgeons: a case report

Abstract

Tissue contamination is a common occurrence in pathology, but surgeons are relatively unaware of this. We present the case of a 45-year-old man with Barrett's oesophagus, in which the histology of routine biopsies of an asymptomatic patient, were reported as 'carcinoma in situ'. Further biopsies were taken over a three month period but showed no evidence of malignancy. Tissue contamination or 'cross over' was identified as the likely cause of the abnormal result. This case report highlights the importance of the correlation of the clinical and histopathological findings and tissue contamination should be considered when both of these findings are not consistent.

Errors in Surgical Pathology Laboratory

“…Sometimes histology shows evidence of suspicious exogenous tissue sample, such as tumor cells with nuclear inclusions similar to arachnoidal cells in an endometrial sample, associated with the presence of eosinophilic amorphous material morphologically similar to secretory meningioma. Some techniques can be helpful to identify mixed-up tissue specimens, such as microsatellite PCR techniques and another [19,20]. Malfunction of laboratory information systems 1 Preanalytical phase include accessioning, gross dissecting, processing, embedding, tissue cutting, mounting, coloring, labeling and releasing slides.…”

“…Another preanalytical errors describe for Morelli et al[20] include specimen wrongly accessioned, incorrect numbering of the blocks or slides, decalcification not performed or insufficient, error in procedure temperature, specimen badly positioned, number was reported incorrectly in block or slide, error in thickness selection and loss or exhaustion of specimen in cutting, wrong coloring (manually) or error in the choice of the program (in automatic coloring).Table 1. Distribution of errors according to the operating process phase and examples.Quality Control in Laboratory…”