Omentum
Morphology and diagnostic patterns in omental specimens — peritoneal surface staging, metastatic disease, and benign mimics
What this project is
Omental specimens — biopsies, partial resections, and “omentectomy for staging” — cross almost every oncologic sign-out queue. This project consolidates the group’s omental morphology work: what’s being submitted, how it’s sampled, and which findings actually change management.
Objectives
- Describe the case mix of omental specimens by indication (staging, symptomatic, incidental).
- Quantify gross and microscopic sampling adequacy.
- Characterize the spectrum of metastatic disease and benign mimics (reactive mesothelium, torsion / infarct, inflammatory changes).
- Identify cases in which omental findings changed stage or management.
Status
| Stream | Status |
|---|---|
| Cohort identification | Active |
| Sampling adequacy review | Draft rubric |
| Metastatic case series | Planning |
| Benign-mimic teaching set | Drafted |
Data
- Omental resections and biopsies with accompanying gross descriptions.
- De-identified WSIs on the Memorial share when available.
- Linked primary tumor diagnoses via hashed accession IDs.
Tools and repositories
How to contribute
- Review the sampling-adequacy rubric and flag ambiguous rules.
- Pilot-code 20 cases against the rubric and compare to the reference reader.
- Annotate one benign-mimic teaching case in QuPath and submit the GeoJSON.
Pitfalls
- “Positive for metastatic carcinoma” in a staging omentectomy changes stage; confirm the linkage to the primary tumor diagnosis before any aggregation.
- Don’t conflate true metastatic deposits with transcoelomic surface implants without the gross correlate — they are prognostically different.
- Sample-size-driven conclusions are tempting in omentum studies. Keep the denominator (number of tissue blocks sampled) in every table.