Thoughts from a clinical research team on gastroesophageal cancer pathology reporting: Where can we go?

Pathologic assessment plays a key role in gastroesophageal cancer management. With standardized synoptic reporting, pathological data completeness and quality have improved. This paper is based on our review of 17,000 gastroesophageal surgical pathology reports in Ontario, Canada, as part of the creation of a provincial database of esophageal, gastroesophageal, and gastric carcinoma patients. Given the volume of cases we reviewed, we reflect on current gastroesophageal pathology reporting practices including resection margins, lymph nodes, and staging elements, with some ideas for improving gastroesophageal surgical pathology reporting that may further improve data quality and interpretability.