National survey of anatomical pathology centres in Italy: the questionnaire

OBJECTIVES: To obtain a picture of the work done in Italian anatomical pathology centres in 2014, and evaluate differences between the various centres in terms of the workloads of medical and non-medical staff. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire designed by a SIAPEC working group was e-mailed to 256 centres and subsequently collected by the Anatomical Pathology Service of Bolzano. QlikView software was used to prepare the final database and check the quality of the data, which were processed using version 18.0 of SPSS for Windows statistical software. RESULTS: The questionnaire was completed by 120 of the centres (46.9%), which were staffed by a mean number of 6.6 physicians (range 1-24), 1.6 biologists (range 0-7), 10.8 laboratory technicians (range 2-47) and 2.2 administrative personnel (range 0-9). During 2014, the centres carried out a mean of 15,000 histology examinations (range 3,215-50,680), almost 11,700 immunohistochemistry examinations (range 0-54,359), and a mean of 1,471 molecular biology examinations (range 0-31,322) relating to a mean of 704 patients (range 0-9,434), and a mean of 16,509 cytology examinations (range 0-150,000) relating to 13,383 patients (range 0-120,000). Each centre physician issued a mean of 2,444 histology examinations reports (range 613-11,000); the ratio between the number of immunohistochemistry examinations and the number of histology examinations was 0.8 (range 0-2.7); and each laboratory technician had a mean overall annual workload of 3,072 histology, molecular biology and cytology examinations (range 793-9,882/year). These values varied widely among the participating centres. The mean ratio between the number of histology examinations carried out and the number of physicians was 1,982.77:1 a year in the small centres (< 10,000 histology cases/year), 2,627:1 a year in the medium-sized centres (10-24,999 histology cases/year), and 2,881.34:1 in the large centres (> 25,000 histology cases/year). There were significant differences between the small and medium-sized centres (p = 0.004) and between the small and large centres (p = 0.001), but not between the medium-sized and large centres. The ratio between the total number of histology, molecular biology and cytology examinations and the number of laboratory technicians was 1,963.34 in the small centres (< 10,000 examinations/year), 2,717.11 in the medium-sized centres (10,000-24,999 examinations/year), and 3,531.56 in the large centres (≥ 25,000 examinations/year). There were significant differences between the small and large centres (p = 0.001) and between the medium-sized and large centres (p = 0.004), but not between the small and medium-sized centres. CONCLUSIONS: The data collected by means of this survey provide an important, albeit partial, point of reference concerning the status of Italian anatomical pathology centres and their recent, everyday working situation.