OBJECTIVE : The aim of this study is to evaluate the utilization of frozen section service and its cost ef­fectiveness, and to assess accuracy and discrepancy of frozen section service at King AbdulAziz University hospital. Material and methods: This study group consisted of 480 frozen sections specimens, which were ex­amined in the department of Histopa-thology at King AbdulAziz University Hospital, Jeddah; over five and a half years from January 1997 to May 2002. The Histopathology records of all these frozen sections were re­trieved and analysed by matching the frozen section diagnosis with the per­manent diagnosis to evaluate the ac­tual need of frozen section based on international standard. The perma­nent diagnosis is compared with the
frozen section diagnosis to find out the discripant cases which were stud­ied in detail. Results: The accuracy of major organs examined is 97-100%, with a mean of 99.1%. There are eight cases with discrepancy between frozen section diagnosis and perma­nent diagnosis. No false positive case is detected. CONCLUSION: Our fro­zen section experience showed high utilization of this service with high ac­curacy rate and proved that it is a very useful diagnostic tool for rapid decision making.
Key words : Frozen section, accu­racy. Frozen section utilization, dis­crepancy.