Best practice: gross examination and sampling of surgical specimens from the urinary bladder.

This review examines aspects of handling biopsies and surgical specimens from the urinary bladder with the aim of providing guidance to ensure that the pathologist is fully able to inform clinicians of all relevant factors that might have bearing on management or prognosis. It also offers recommendations on good practice in reporting in the setting of the specialist multidisciplinary meeting and emphasises quality control of the process, referring to recently published guidelines and consensuses while admitting that many of the recommendations may not be supported by a strong evidence base. The role of urine cytology and the value of frozen sections in urological practice are discussed.

Bayesian belief network for the Gleason patterns in prostatic adenocarcinoma: development of a diagnostic decision support system for educational purposes.

Objective: To develop a Bayesian belief network (BBN) for Gleason grading of prostate adenocarcinoma.

Study Design: A shallow network was developed for Gleason grading with open-tree topology, with a root node containing 5 subjective diagnostic alternatives and 8 first-level descendant nodes for diagnostic features. Features or diagnostic clues of the descendant nodes were based on architecture of Gleason patterns.

The role of HLA-specific antibodies in kidney transplant rejection: published studies and local data.

The post-transplantation production of antibodies directed against donor HLA class I and class II mismatches has been shown to be associated with transplant rejection. Recipient sensitization against donor HLA plays a key role in transplant rejection; this risk is best minimized by efficient pre-transplant antibody detection and definition, effective pre-allocation cross-matching, and minimization of HLA mismatches between donor and recipient. The term "PRA" is of little value.

Association between C4d staining in renal transplant biopsies, production of donor-specific HLA antibodies, and graft outcome.

Background: We carried out a retrospective study of C4d staining in paraffin sections from renal transplant biopsies to determine the association between C4d staining, donor-specific antibodies (DSA), histological features, and graft outcome.

Methods: We studied 92 patients who had been biopsied for graft dysfunction. Biopsies were classified using Banff 97 criteria and features suggestive of antibody-mediated rejection were noted.