eLetters

166 e-Letters

  • Rewriting "Little Red Riding Hood" story may be dangerous
    Giulio Rossi

    Rewriting "Little Red Riding Hood" story may be dangerous

    Maria Cecilia Mengoli,1 Giuseppe Bogina,2 Alberto Cavazza, 3 Giulio Rossi 1

    1Section of Pathology, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Policlinico, Modena, Italy 2Section of Pathologic Anatomy, Hospital "Don Calabria", Negrar, Verona, Italy 3Department of Oncology and Advanced Technologies, Operative Unit of Oncology, Arcispedale S. Maria Nuova /...

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  • Medicolegal quasi-hospital autopsies
    Richard Y. Ball

    The paper by Turnbull and colleagues (1) on the decline of the adult hospital autopsy rate in UK prompted me to review and extend the Norwich data that they kindly quoted (2). I calculated the adult hospital autopsy rate since our publication (including that relating to the first five months of this year) using the method that we both employed. The modest improvement that we reported in the adult hospital autopsy rate i...

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  • Effect of diet and medicines on the serum iron and transferrin saturation
    Thein H. Oo

    I read this article with interest. I totally agree with the authors' statement that many requests for HFE mutation analysis are frequently ordered in the community without measuring serum iron and transferrin saturation (T-sat) first. While this report is intriguing, I am very much interested to know if the samples for serum iron and T-sat in this study were fasting samples or postprandial samples. The diet rich in iron...

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  • Authors Response: Histological grade in needle core biopsies of invasive carcinoma of the breast: the potential role of reduction of mitotic count threshold in improving agreement with grade in the surgical specimen
    Joseph F Loane

    Dear Sir / Madam,

    We are happy to address the points raised by Lee et al in their commentary on our paper [1] and thank them for their interest in it.

    Lee et al correctly note that our re-assessment was of the mitotic count in these specimens. To clarify, these were carried out by either of two observers (CAD, JL) blinded to the original core and excision grading. The other elements of the tumour grade...

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  • Histological grade in needle core biopsies of invasive carcinoma of the breast: the potential role of reduction of mitotic count threshold in improving agreement with grade in the surgical specimen.
    Andrew HS Lee

    Accurate histological grading of invasive carcinoma of the breast in needle core biopsies is important for patient management, for example for selecting patients for neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The grade in the core biopsy tends to underestimate the grade in the excision specimen, particularly due to underestimation of the mitotic count. We recently proposed a reduction in the threshold for the mitotic count which we found...

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  • Comment on: 'The value of autopsies in the era of high-tech medicine: discrepant findings persist." Kuijpers C.C.H.J. et al. J Clin Pathol 2014;67:512-519 doi:10.1136/jclinpath-2013-202122
    Simone L. Van Es

    To the Editor: Without doubt the hospital-based autopsy is an effective quality assurance and learning tool. The study by Kuijpers et al. supports this.[1] However, autopsy is a time-consuming and expensive procedure which may sometimes cause distress to the deceased patient's family and be associated with complex consent issues. It is therefore important to ask how far reaching, beyond the pathologist and the referring cli...

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  • Reply to Dr. G Stenhouse
    Frank A Carey

    The correspondent points out that the RCPath standards of 2007 were written for a symptomatic population. This is not specifically stated in the standards, which were written just as the UK pilots of FOB screening were concluding. The current proposed standards (2014) are still in draft stage. It seems clear however that it will apply equally to all cancers. The issue of the effect of preoperative therapy on reporting of...

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  • Comment on 'A Survey of colorectal cancer in Scotland: compliance with guidelines and effect of proforma reporting'.
    Dr. Grant Stenhouse

    Dear Editor,

    I entirely agree with the authors of 'A Survey of reporting of colorectal cancer in Scotland: compliance with guidelines and effect of proforma reporting'1 that proforma reporting should be standard across Scotland for reporting colorectal caner excision specimens. Although obvious, I feel it should be stated the 2007 RCPath dataset standards 2 were issued for a symptomatic population and, as stat...

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  • Re:Mucosal large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the head and neck regions:inconsistent data
    Kimihide Kusafuka

    Answers to the letter Dear Dr. Sir. 1. We confirmed that the patient was 79 years-old man on case 2. As the mitosis index and the Ki-67 labeling index were estimated with newly prepared sections, the indices were a bit different. We confirmed that the tumor cells were focally positive for chromogranin-A, but negative for synaptophysin on case 2. 2. Certainly, at the writing step of the review article (ref.3), the progno...

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  • To the Editor
    Ann E. Walts

    To the Editor:

    In their review article "Challenges and controversies in the diagnosis of mesothelioma: Part 1. Cytology-only diagnosis, biopsies, immunohistochemistry, discrimination between mesothelioma and reactive mesothelial hyperplasia, and biomarkers", Henderson et al.1 describe and illustrate "rod-like or cylindrical crystalloids as seen in numerous mesothelial cells in the pleural effusion of a malignan...

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