PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Richard Colling
AU  - Eve Fryer
AU  - Jeremy Cobbold
AU  - Jane Collier
AU  - Elena Collantes
AU  - Lai Mun Wang
AU  - Stefan Hubscher
AU  - Judith Wyatt
AU  - Kenneth Fleming
TI  - A template for a clinico-pathological audit of medical liver biopsies
AID  - 10.1136/jclinpath-2015-203023
DP  - 2015 Nov 01
TA  - Journal of Clinical Pathology
PG  - 935--937
VI  - 68
IP  - 11
4099  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/68/11/935.short
4100  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/68/11/935.full
SO  - J Clin Pathol2015 Nov 01; 68
AB  - Aims With changing indications for performing medical liver biopsies, we aimed to develop a tool to allow pathologists to evaluate the current usefulness, value and impact of their medical liver biopsy service.Methods We designed and piloted a questionnaire-based clinico-pathological audit for medical liver biopsies.Results The audit tool was simple to implement and provided useful information about our service. Hepatologists felt that 96% of reports were clinically useful. 56% of biopsies confirmed clinical diagnoses, 46% helped differentiate between diagnoses and 42% were able to exclude possible diagnoses. 74% resulted in a change of management and 27% of liver biopsies resulted in a diagnosis which was not clinically suspected.Conclusions We demonstrate the usefulness of an audit tool in providing evidence of the value of the liver pathology service in a large UK regional centre.