Last Friday, during the week of pathology, our colleague Sofie Berghuis was awarded the PALGA award. PALGA is the nationwide network and registry of histo- and cytopathology in the Netherlands. The purpose of PALGA is to promote communication and the provision of information within and between pathology laboratories, and to make the resultant knowledge available to health care. The PALGA Award was created to encourage the use of PALGA's database for scientific research. The PALGA Award goes to the best abstract based on PALGA data.
Sofie is very grateful and honored with this award. The prize was awarded for the recently published study on discordance in ER, PR and HER2 between tumor needle biopsy and tumor resection material in breast cancer patients. The pathology reports used to determine whether and how frequently breast cancer patients have such discordant test results, were derived from PALGA. The results of the study indicate that double testing of ER/PR/HER2 is less common than expected. Discordance in ER/PR/HER2 test results between tumor needle biopsy taken at the time of diagnosis and tumor resection material is very low, especially in patients not receiving any form of neoadjuvant therapy. These results imply that a substantial number of tests can potentially be omitted in specific subgroups of breast cancer patients. The full article can be retrieved through this link.
