The Division of Frozen Section Pathology performs frozen sections/intraoperative consultations, and collects tissue for special studies, such as electron microscopy, photography of gross specimens, flow cytometry, cytologic smears with rapid staining, and cytogenetics. The division also assists tissue procurement personnel in identification and collection of tissue for research purposes. The members of this division are Dr. Gary Barnett and Dr. Lawrence De Renne (Director) with further staffing from the Pathology Outreach Division. This division supports the other members of the Anatomic Pathology Branch by removing the interruptions they would encounter to perform frozen sections, and thereby increasing the efficiency of the divisions. Frozen Section pathology is a specialized area of anatomic pathology that requires an expertise in general pathology and an awareness of common diagnostic pitfalls and tumor mimics. We foster the educational mission of the department by helping to train residents, pathology assistants, and technicians, as well as medical students. Both Drs. Barnett and De Renne are involved in helping obtain tissue for research purposes and are involved in various tissue banking initiatives. This year we have adopted the use of liquid nitrogen to more quickly freeze our specimens to shorten the turn-around time for frozen section performance. We hope this will decrease certain nuclear artifacts that may be produced by the slower freezing methods currently being used. Our quality assurance program continues to monitor our turn-around-times and diagnostic accuracy for this high risk, high frequency, and problem prone activity.