Endometrioid endometrial carcinomas (EEC) are the most commonly diagnosed malignancies of the female genital tract. Myometrial invasion depth is one of the most significant pathological prognostic parameters. Different morphological invasion patterns have been characterized. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic significance of the microcystic elongated and fragmented (MELF) myometrium invasion pattern in patients with EEC and its relationship with other clinicopathological parameters. This study included 101 patients with EEC in our institution between 2011 and 2020. The MELF pattern was evaluated in hematoxylineosin- stained sections. Pan-cytokeratin staining was performed on paraffin-embedded blocks of lymph nodes for cases without lymph node metastasis. The MELF pattern was observed in 29 (29.8%) patients. It was significantly associated with lymphovascular invasion (p<0.001), pathologic stage (p=0.048), infiltrative pattern (p<0.001), and necrosis (p=0.005). No significant correlation was observed between the MELF pattern and overall and disease-free survival rates. The MELF pattern is associated with other prognostic parameters, but its prognostic significance for survival has not been found. If the MELF pattern is observed in the hysterectomy material for cases without lymph node dissection during the first surgery, these patients may need additional surgery or adjuvant therapy due to the high risk of lymphovascular invasion and lymph node metastasis.

The stroma surrounding the tumor cells is important in tumor progression and treatment resistance, besides the properties of tumor cells. Studies on the tumor stroma characteristics will contribute to the knowledge for new treatment approaches. A total of 363 breast cancer patients were evaluated for the tumor-stroma ratio. The percentage of stroma was visually assessed on hematoxylin-eosin stained slides. The cases of tumor-stroma ratio more than 50% were categorized as tumor-stroma ratio high, and those less than 50% and below were categorized as tumor-stroma ratio low. Tumor-stroma ratio-high tumors had shorter overall survival (p=0.002). Disease-free survival tended to be shorter in tumor-stroma ratio-high tumors (p=0.082) compared with tumor-stroma ratio-low tumors. Tumor-stroma ratio was an independent prognostic parameter for the total group of patients (p=0.003) and also axillary lymph node metastasis and tumor-stroma ratio was statistically associated (p=0.004). Also, tumor-stroma ratio was an independent prognostic parameter in node-positive Luminal A and B subgroups for overall survival (p<0.001). Tumor-stroma ratio is an independent prognostic parameter that can be evaluated quite easily in all molecular subtypes of all breast cancers and does not require extra cost and time to evaluate.

OBJECTIVE: Breast cancer is the most common cancer type among women. One of the most important parameters in the prognosis of patients is the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The most important parameter for neoadjuvant chemotherapy success is appropriate patient selection. We investigated the effect of tumor-stroma type and tumor-stroma ratio on neoadjuvant chemotherapy response, using the Residual Cancer Burden scoring systems.

Objectives: Autoverification (AV) is releasing laboratory results using predefined rules. AV standardizes the verification of laboratory results, improves turnaround time (TAT), detects errors in the total test process, and enables effective use of laboratory staff. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the outcomes of implementing the AV in a tertiary hospital. Methods: The study was performed in Gazi University Health Research and Application Hospital, Core Biochemistry Laboratory, between August 2017 and October 2019. Step by step, AV algorithms were designed and implemented via middleware for 29 clinical biochemistry tests. A comprehensive validation was performed before the AV system was run. Initially, AV system was tested with datasets and simulated patients (dry testing). Next, samples that may violate AV rules were tested anonymously with no-named trial barcodes (wet testing). Finally, validation of the system was performed with real patients, while the AV was running in the background but not active (i.e., while the manual verification was still going on). After all these steps were successful, the system was started. Results: In the daytime, AV rates were ≥75 % for 23 of 29 tests. In night-shift, AV rates were ≥70 % for 16 of 25 tests. Report-based performance was found 26 % for daytime. TAT in the daytime decreased after AV implementation. Conclusions: Although this is the first time we have implemented the AV, a significant percentage of the tests have been verified. However, approaches that will increase the percentage of report-based verification will enhance the efficiency of autoverification.