Synoptic/checklist reporting of breast biopsies: has the time come?

Narrative descriptive reporting has been the traditional format employed in surgical pathology for almost as long as its inception as a specialty. While the descriptive prose has served us well in the past, its accuracy and readability is variable. Descriptions of color, shape, and texture are often subjective. Surgical pathologists are trained observers, but there are inherent differences in reporting style, and descriptive prowess depends on language skills and vocabulary. These differences are reflected in reports generated by pathologists in the same laboratory and may even be more evident in reports from different laboratories and across nations using the English language. The reproducibility of morphologic descriptions is thus a matter of some concern.