Getting a reliable diagnosis of melanoma can be a significant challenge for pathologists. The diagnosis relies on a pathologist’s visual assessment of biopsy material on microscopic slides, which can often be subjective.
Of all pathology fields, analyzing biopsies for skin lesions and cancers has one of the highest rates of diagnostic errors, which can affect millions of people each year.
Now, a study led by UCLA researchers, has found that obtaining a second opinion from pathologists who are board certified or have fellowship training in dermatopathology can help improve the accuracy and reliability of diagnosing melanoma, one of the deadliest and most aggressive forms of skin cancer.
“A diagnosis is the building block on which all other medical treatment is based,” Joann Elmore, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and researcher at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in a statement. “All patients deserve an accurate diagnosis. Unfortunately the evaluation and diagnosis of skin biopsy specimens is challenging with a lot of variability among physicians.”
In the study, led by Elmore and colleagues, the value of a second opinion by general pathologists and dermatopathologists were evaluated to see if it helped improve the correct diagnostic classification.
To evaluate the impact of obtaining second opinions, the team used samples from the Melanoma Pathology Study, which comprises of 240 skin biopsy lesion samples. Among the 187 pathologists who examined the cases, 113 were general pathologists and 74 were dermatopathologists.
The team studied misclassification rates, which is how often the diagnoses of practicing US pathologists disagreed with a consensus reference diagnosis of three pathologists who had extensive experience in evaluating melanocytic lesions. The team found that the misclassification of these lesions yielded the lowest rates when first, second and third reviewers were sub-specialty trained dermatopathologists. Misclassification was the highest when reviewers were all general pathologists who lacked the subspecialty training.
“Our results show having a second opinion by an expert with subspecialty training provides value in improving the accuracy of the diagnosis, which is imperative to help guide patients to the most effective treatments,” said Elmore, who is also the director of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program.
Elmore is now studying the potential impact of computer machine learning as a tool to improve diagnostic accuracy. She is partnering with computer scientists who specialize in computer visualization of complex image information, as well as leading pathologists around the globe to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostic system.
Michael Piepkorn of the University of Washington School of Medicine is the study’s first author. Raymond Barnhill of the Institut Curie is the co-senior author.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open and supported by NCI.
