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United States Government Work, uncopyrighted, public-domain,
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PRINCIPLE OF THE TEST.
Every year the laboratory is obligated to send out 18 cases to the Armed
Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) for their review. This exercise
is known as the Systematic External Review of Surgicals (SERS),
and is an important part of our Quality Assurance in pathology.
See also: PROCEDURE 35: QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
IN ANATOMIC PATHOLOGY.
SPECIMEN REQUIRED.
Blocks and glass slides from the archival files
in Surgical Pathology.
REAGENTS, INSTRUMENTATION.
Not applicable.
STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION.
1. The submission of the SERS cases is supervised
by the Office of the Director, and the cases
are ultimately mailed out with the Director's signature.
In addition, the Director's office reminds us when we are
delinquent in sending out our SERS cases.
2. SERS cases are prepared by the coordinated activity
of the Chief of the Surgical Pathology Section, the histology supervisor
and the Secretary to the Chief of Laboratory Services. The Chief of Surgical
Pathology selects cases for SERS review. The surgical pathology accession
numbers of these cases along with the patient names are given to the
Secretary of the Laboratory Chief, who then pulls the pathology reports
for those three cases. The secretary also calls the histology supervisor
and asks that the slides and related materials be prepared for the
three cases.
3. In histology, a case is prepared for SERS by making one extra H&E
section and 3 extra unstained paraffin sections for each block of a case.
The paraffin blocks and one H&E section of each block (from each case) are
brought up to the Secretary. One H&E section and three unstained paraffin
sections are kept in our surgical pathology slide file in storage. This
way we maintain a stained slide and unstained tissue on every block of
every case that we send out. The secretary of the Lab Chief then prepares
a package to be sent out to the AFIP that consists of a covering letter
(signed by the Director), three surgical pathology reports, all the
blocks for each report and one H&E section for each block.
4. Before the entire package is mailed out, it is brought
to the Chief of Surgical Pathology who reviews the material
to insure that the slides are adequate and that the paperwork
and slides match each other and represent the intended SERS cases.
A copy is kept by the Secretary of the Lab Chief of all reports
and covering letters that go out as SERS cases.
Finally, the package is mailed out to the AFIP.