Background: Quality assurance is an integral part of modern laboratory services. Quality control is relatively easy in hematology and biochemistry laboratories however, similar quality standards are difficult to analyze in surgical laboratories. Comparing the diagnostic accuracy of frozen section with gold standard histopathology can be used for this purpose. Methodology: The data for this two and a half year (January 2014- June 2016) retrospective analysis was retrieved from the records of Department of Pathology, Dayananad Medical College and Hospital Ludhiana, Punjab. The routine protocol of intraoperative consultations in the Department included prior intimation (at least 2 hours before expected sampling) with relevant clinical details and indication of frozen section. The sample was received in normal saline and representative sections were submitted for frozen section after thorough gross examination of the tissue. Results: A total of 200 cases were retrieved from the archives of Department of Pathology during this retrospective analysis. Majority (34.5%) of the intraoperative consultations were sought from the Gynaecology unit {Uterus 53 cases (26.5%) and ovary 16 (8%) cases}. Overall concordance rate was 95% (190/200) with sensitivity of 96.4% and specificity of 100%. Conclusion: The intra-operative consultations using frozen section is a very useful in assessing the quality assurance and the rospective analysis of these methods with routine histopathology can yield adequate quality assessment of a laboratory.

Keywords: Quality Assurance; Surgical Laboratories; Frozen Section.