Writing oral pathology biopsy report: a guide for beginners

Descriptive pathology in surgical biopsy reports is mainly about writing histopathology reports. However, it is almost always performed under the pressure of time and accuracy. Accuracy is critical because the patient is still alive and the clinician is going to act on the diagnosis quickly. Most reports are evaluated and generated by a single pathologist. Therefore, possibility of making mistakes in writing a biopsy report is usually existing. A clear concise unambiguous writing style is extremely important to meet the needs of the report. In some reports there is insufficient information and in others excess verbiage is included with no medical value. The lack of a professional standard has resulted in some of the inconsistency in biopsy reports. Although much has been studied and written about biopsy reports but no such compiled studies along with descriptive pathology mentioned in oral and maxillofacial pathology literature. Therefore, extensive literature search had been made and various articles have been retrieved from various databases such as PubMed, Medline, google science direct etc. Duration of studies or articles have not been decided as there are very few such descriptive articles in reputed journals. Articles in the form of PDF, word and even website articles have been included. This review article presents extensive review of various parameters to be considered in writing histopathology report of oral lesions.