Not all errors are created equal: assessment of amended diagnoses at a major academic center.

Cohort studyAmerican journal of clinical pathology· Mar 2026

Not all errors are created equal: assessment of amended diagnoses at a major academic center.

Stanislav Fridland, Vikas Mehta, Lucy Jager … Christopher Felicelli

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CytopathologyCohort studyClinical practiceQ2IF 2.0

Major diagnostic amendments in surgical pathology fell from 30% to 15% over 5 years.

Not all errors are created equal: assessment of amended diagnoses at a major academic center.

Stanislav Fridland … Christopher Felicelli

American journal of clinical pathology · Mar 2026 · Q2 in Pathology

Purpose

We sought to characterize amendment rates, patterns, and turnaround times in surgical pathology and to identify subspecialty and error-specific opportunities for quality improvement.

Methods

Amendments were allocated to 1 of 7 predefined error categories and analyzed by year and subspecialty.

Results

major diagnostic errors nearly halved over five years

OR 4.68 (95% CI 2.65 to 8.27)

CI excludes the null - significant

More results

Over 5 years, 0.33% of finalized surgical pathology reports were amended (95% CI, 0.31-0.35), within national College of American Pathologists Q-Probes and Q-Tracks program benchmarks, and stable over time (P = .64).

More results

Breast pathology showed enrichment of laterality errors (16.1%; odds ratio, 4.68 [95% CI, 2.65-8.27]; q = 8.26 ×10-6), gastrointestinal cases were enriched for anatomic-site errors (15.4%; odds ratio, 2.80 [95% CI, 1.71-4.56]; q = 9.28 ×10-4).

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Conclusion

Amendments in surgical pathology are uncommon, timely, and stable. Subspecialty-specific amendment patterns highlight discrete areas for targeted quality improvement and focused secondary review.

Not all errors are created equal: assessment of amended diagnoses at a major academic center.

Not all errors are created equal: assessment of amended diagnoses at a major academic center.

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