The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of remote frozen sections examined by telepathology. The gold standard was the diagnosis made using direct examination of paraffin-embedded sections. A consecutive series of 134 frozen-section cases were examined by six qualified pathologists. We used the Zeiss telepathology system with robot microscopy, which allowed different magnifications and fields of view to be chosen. The wide-area network used the TCP/IP protocol. The diagnosis made on the frozen sections was compared with the final diagnosis in the paraffin-embedded sections. Times were recorded for each telepathology session, as well as the users comments on usability and software, and on any communication problems which occurred. In addition, we evaluated the importance of the macroscopic sampling of the surgical specimen, applied to each type of tissue. The diagnostic evaluation showed complete agreement in approximately 80% of cases, in 20% diagnosis was not possible due to insufficient quality of the slides. The median time for the telemedicine diagnosis was 14 min 30 sec.
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