Synoptic reporting increases quality of upper gastrointestinal cancer pathology reports

Introduction Traditionally, surgical pathology reports are narrative. These report types are prone to error and missing data; therefore, structured standardized reporting was introduced. However, the effect of synoptic reporting on the completeness of esophageal and gastric carcinoma pathology reports is not yet established. Materials and methods A population-based retrospective nationwide cohort study in the Netherlands was conducted over a period of 2012–2016, utilizing the Netherlands Cancer Registry for patient data and the nationwide network and registry of histology for pathology data. Results In total, 1148 narrative and 1311 synoptic pathology reports were included. Completeness was achieved in 56.4% of the narrative reports versus 97.0% of the synoptic reports ( p