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Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare neurodegenerative spongiform encephalopathy that causes neuronal derangement secondary to prion protein. Its initial diagnosis is often complex and challenging due to non-specific clinical presentation, lack of awareness, and low clinical suspicion. This disease is invariably fatal, and most patients die within 12 months of presentation. Definite diagnosis of prion disease requires neuropathological analysis, usually done at autopsy. Here, we present the autopsy findings of a 57-year-old male patient, illustrating the complexity of diagnosing this disease early in the clinical course and the need for a broad differential diagnosis at the onset., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: None, (Copyright © 2024 The Authors.)

Introduction  Evaluation of intraoperative squash smear and frozen section (FS) in central nervous system (CNS) neoplasms is consistently practiced for rapid assessment and has several advantages to its credence. It is an invaluable tool to ensure adequacy of tissue obtained to establish the diagnosis. Moreover, it aids in guiding the surgeon for critical decisions regarding the extent of resection. Although molecular markers have been integrated with morphology in the revised 2016 World Health Organization classification of brain tumors, precise morphological assessment still remains the foundation for the diagnosis and rapid intraoperative assessment of morphological details is equally critical and rewarding. Objective  This study aims to audit the diagnostic disparity between intraoperative diagnoses based on a combination of squash cytology and FS in cases of CNS lesions with gold standard, final diagnosis based on examination of formalin fixed paraffin embedded hematoxylin, and eosin-stained tissue sections. Materials and Methods  All intraoperative squash cytology and FS reported for CNS lesions from January 2017 to December 2020 were reviewed. The cases were categorized into three groups-group 1: when diagnosis of intraoperative diagnosis based on a combination of squash cytology and FS was same as the final histopathological diagnosis (concordant), group 2: partially concordant, and group 3: discordant cases. Statistical Analysis  Descriptive statistics was used to classify the data and diagnostic accuracy was calculated. Results  Complete concordance was present in 69.96% (191/273) cases, 20.1% (55/273) cases showed partial concordance, and 9.89% (27/273) cases were discordant with histopathological diagnosis. Out of the 27 discordant cases, misclassification of tumor type was the most common category (11 cases, 40%), followed by grading mismatch (7 cases, 25.9%), and misdiagnosis of tumor versus nontumor conditions (9 cases, 33.3%). Conclusion  Our study shows that combination of intraoperative squash cytology and FS shows a high percentage of accuracy in arriving at intraoperative diagnosis in cases of intracranial lesions. Regular audits of discordant cases should be conducted by surgeons and pathologists as part of a quality assurance measure to sensitize themselves with the potential pitfalls, minimizing misinterpretation and helping in providing a more conclusive opinion to the operating surgeons., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to this research and its publication., (The Indian Association of Laboratory Physicians. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).)

Infective endocarditis (IE) is the heart valve or endocardium infection. We report a rare case of polymicrobial endocarditis, namely invasive Aspergillus spp and Acinetobacter baumannii, in a 36-year-old male with a medical history of degenerative disease of the aorta with abdominal aortic and ascending aortic aneurysms with a fulminant clinical course and fatal outcome. The treatment was challenging due to multiple comorbidities. The autopsy revealed dual pathogen endocarditis due to Acinetobacter baumannii sepsis and invasive Aspergillus spp mycosis. This report emphasizes that polymicrobial endocarditis (PE) is an infrequent finding with a poor prognosis requiring high clinical suspicion., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: None, (Copyright © 2022 The Authors.)