April 2014

Greeting paragraph

On the occasion of SEAP' 10 years anniversary

The impact of immunohistochemistry and molecular pathology in cancer diagnostics is rapidly growing, but the methods are technically complex, and no aspect of this complexity can be ignored, from the moment of collecting the specimen to issuance of the final report. In spite of many efforts to optimize the methods and standardize the results and interpretation, still many analyses are insufficient, which may delay treatment and threaten the patient security. Inspired by the United Kingdom National External Quality Assurance Scheme for Immunocytochemistry (UK NEQAS ICC), which has been active for decades, both the program of the Sociedad Española de Anatomía Patológica (SEAP) and the Nordic Immunohistochemical Quality Control (NordiQC) were established about 10 yeas ago as national or regional organizations with the common aim of promoting and improving the quality of diagnostic techniques in the laboratories through monitoring of quality, training and counselling. NordiQC congratulates SEAP on its 10 years anniversary and appreciate its initiative to bring the European quality organizations together in order to coordinate the work for improving quality in cancer biomarker analysis.

Mogens Vyberg
Director, professor
NordiQC
Aalborg University Hospital
Denmark