The study was done to evaluate the ability of a DLS to grade diagnostic prostate biopsy specimens.
The frequency of the exact agreement of the DLS with the majority opinion of the subspecialists in categorizing each tumor-containing specimen as 1 of 5 categories: nontumor, GG1, GG2, GG3, or GG4-5. For comparison, the rate of agreement of 19 general pathologists’ opinions with the subspecialists’ majority opinions was also evaluated.
For grading tumor-containing biopsy specimens in the validation set (n = 498), the rate of agreement with subspecialists was significantly higher for the DLS than for general pathologists. In subanalyses of biopsy specimens from an external validation set (n = 322), the Gleason grading performance of the DLS remained similar. For distinguishing nontumor from tumor-containing biopsy specimens (n = 752), the rate of agreement with subspecialists was 94.3% for general pathologists.
The study concluded that the DLS showed higher proficiency than general pathologists at Gleason grading prostate needle core biopsy specimens and generalized to an independent institution. Future research is necessary to evaluate the potential utility of using the DLS as a decision support tool in clinical workflows.
Reference: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2768225
