The agreement of light and electron microscopy in diagnosis of glomerulonephritis during 10 years, southern Iran

In variable types of glomerular kidney diseases, evaluation of kidney biopsies by electron, light and IF microscopy is essential for diagnosis confirmation and management planning. Since electron microscopic evaluation of all specimens is not economically cost-beneficial, there should be an evaluation of how necessary is performing it for each type of glomerular disease. We gathered and analyzed pathologic reports from electron and light microscopy of 985 cases of renal biopsies with variable glomerular diseases during years 2000-2010. Analysis of results was done using SPSS software. The p-value < 0.05 considered to significance. We discovered that only in MCD and alport nephrology there is no significant difference between the group in which electron microscopy provided valuable additional information and the group that consisted of cases in which electron microscopy did not add any useful information to light microscopy. Since electron microscopy is an expensive process to be performed routinely for evaluation and diagnosis of kidney diseases, it should be wisely selected for diagnosis of those disorders that need to be evaluated by electron microscopy.