2005 Scientific Session Abstracts
Cancer Reporting by Automated Synopsis Generator
Robert Kurzon , (rkurzon@mhs.net) Department of Pathology, Memorial Hospital West, Pembroke Pines, FL
Context: The College of American Pathologists has issued guidelines for the inclusion of important parameters in pathology reports of cancer cases. Compliance with these guidelines has been mandated by the American College of Surgeons as a requirement for cancer center accreditation. Checklist documents are available to assist pathologists in following the guidelines, but in their raw form are too cumbersome for direct inclusion into pathology reports without editing into a more compact form.
Technology: A suite of documents was created in Word 2000 (Microsoft Corporation; Redmond, Washington), each containing a site-specific synoptic framework and an automated data entry form. The entry form was programmed in Visual Basic for Applications. The automated documents were run on personal computers running Windows 2000 or Windows XP (Microsoft Corporation; Redmond, Washington). The generated synopses were pasted into WinSurge anatomic pathology software (Computer Trust Corporation; Boston, Massachusetts).
Design: The synoptic framework consisted of labels corresponding to individual parameters from the checklists, and placeholders for the corresponding data. The data entry form was a tabbed multi-page screen form with headings corresponding to sections of the checklists. Checkboxes, option button groups, and textboxes were used for data entry. Programming logic automatically generated the tumor stages from the data entered. The user was prompted for missing data elements before a synopsis could be generated. Programming logic transferred the data items into placeholders in the synopsis framework and automatically placed the generated synopsis on the Windows clipboard, ready to paste into the desired field of the pathology report at the end of the text diagnosis.
Results: Synopsis generators self-enforced compliance with checklist guidelines. Pathology reports with synopses were more readable by clinicians and tumor registry staff. Manual editing was significantly reduced.
Conclusions: Synopsis generators significantly reduced the time to prepare compliant, readable pathology reports in cancer cases.