Are Pathologists Biased? Effect of Blinding on Pathologist Assessment of Lymph-Vascular Invasion in Breast Cancer (Proposal for New Generation Internet-Based Randomized Controlled Trial Design) - Abstract
Pathology is interpretative diagnostic clinical discipline based on visual evaluation of pattern of tissue alterations in disease as opposed to norm. It is an integrated heuristic process, resulted in formalized pathology report which contains diagnostic and prognostic items, which frequently correlate to each other, and which interpretation is frequently non-independent of each other. Therefore, there is a risk of incorporation bias, which could inflate diagnostic and prognostic value of certain clinical parameters. This could potentially mislead clinicians in their further decision making process regarding appropriateness of chemotherapy therapy for individual
patients. Here we propose a novel model for internet-based randomized controlled trial, which would allow to explore the extent of incorporation bias (if any), using pathologists’ interpretation of lymphovascular invasion in breast cancer.