e-Learning for Instruction and to Improve Reproducibility of Scoring Tumor-Stroma Ratio in Colon Carcinoma: Performance and Reproducibility Assessment in the UNITED Study

Background: The amount of stroma in the primary tumor is an important prognostic parameter. The tumor-stroma ratio (TSR) was previously validated by international research groups as a robust parameter with good interobserver agreement.

Objective: The Uniform Noting for International Application of the Tumor-Stroma Ratio as an Easy Diagnostic Tool (UNITED) study was developed to bring the TSR to clinical implementation. As part of the study, an e-Learning module was constructed to confirm the reproducibility of scoring the TSR after proper instruction.

Methods: The e-Learning module consists of an autoinstruction for TSR determination (instruction video or written protocol) and three sets of 40 cases (training, test, and repetition sets). Scoring the TSR is performed on hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections and takes only 1-2 minutes. Cases are considered stroma-low if the amount of stroma is ≤50%, whereas a stroma-high case is defined as >50% stroma. Inter- and intraobserver agreements were determined based on the Cohen κ score after each set to evaluate the reproducibility.

Results: Pathologists and pathology residents (N=63) with special interest in colorectal cancer participated in the e-Learning. Forty-nine participants started the e-Learning and 31 (63%) finished the whole cycle (3 sets). A significant improvement was observed from the training set to the test set; the median κ score improved from 0.72 to 0.77 (P=.002).

Conclusions: e-Learning is an effective method to instruct pathologists and pathology residents for scoring the TSR. The reliability of scoring improved from the training to the test set and did not fall back with the repetition set, confirming the reproducibility of the TSR scoring method.

Trial registration: The Netherlands Trial Registry NTR7270; https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/7072.

International registered report identifier (irrid): RR2-10.2196/13464.