accuracy of frozen sections

background and objective: intraoperative consultation by frozen section is a high – risk procedure with important consequences. therefore, it is critical to determine efficiency of frozen section performance periodically. this study was performed to determine the accuracy of frozen section in urmia university of medical sciences. materials & methods:inthis cross sectional study, we compared the results of 200 consecutive cases of frozen sections with their final permanent section diagnoses in teaching hospitals of urmia university of medical sciences during march 2001 to march 2008. results: a total of 155 neoplastic and 45 nonneoplastic specimens were studied. the overall accuracy of frozen sections was 96.5%. in diagnosis of neoplastic lesions, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and accuracy were 93.1%, 97.7%, 96%, 95% and 95.9%, respectively. conclusion: in this university interpretation of frozen sections is done with high accuracy and is valuable to help surgeons to plan the best management of the operation.