Medicine: Watching the Tissue

In Chicago's Grant Hospital one morning last week, half a dozen physicians gathered for the regular meeting of their medical audit committee. The meeting, like those over the past five years, was devoted to a businesslike examination of the hospital's medical records of the week. In perhaps the most important part of the session, the doctors considered the "tissue reports" of the pathology department. Their main concerns: 1) to see whether parts of the body removed by surgery were really diseased, 2) to see to what extent preoperative diagnosis had been confirmed by...