Surgical pathology

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Malignant melanoma
of the skin. This is as it would appear on the patient.
hematoxylin & eosin
, and viewed on a microscope slide

Surgical pathology is the most significant and time-consuming area of practice for most

interventional radiologists
.

The practice of surgical pathology allows for definitive diagnosis of disease (or lack thereof) in any case where tissue is surgically removed from a patient. This is usually performed by a combination of gross (i.e., macroscopic) and histologic (i.e., microscopic) examination of the tissue, and may involve evaluations of molecular properties of the tissue by immunohistochemistry or other laboratory tests.

Specimens

There are two major types of specimens submitted for surgical pathology analysis: biopsies and surgical resections.[1]

A biopsy is a small piece of tissue removed primarily for the purposes of surgical pathology analysis, most often in order to render a definitive

idiopathic diseases of the skin and gastrointestinal tract
, to name only a few.

Surgical resection specimens are obtained by the therapeutic surgical removal of an entire diseased area or organ (and occasionally multiple organs). These procedures are often intended as definitive surgical treatment of a disease in which the diagnosis is already known or strongly suspected. However, pathological analysis of these specimens is critically important in confirming the previous diagnosis,

adjuvant chemotherapy
in the case of cancer.

In the determination of surgical margin of a surgical resection, one can use the

CCPDMA. A special type of CCPDMA is named after a general surgeon, or the Mohs surgery
method.

Workflow

Subspecialties

Histologic slide demonstrating viral myocarditis, an infection of the heart muscle

Many pathologists seek fellowship-level training, or otherwise pursue expertise in a focused area of surgical pathology. Subspecialization is particularly prevalent in the academic setting, where pathologists may specialise in an area of diagnostic surgical pathology that is relevant to their research, but is becoming increasingly prevalent in private practice as well. Subspecialization has a number of benefits, such as allowing for increased experience and skill at interpreting challenging cases, as well as development of a closer working relationship between the pathologist and clinicians within a subspecialty area. Commonly recognized subspecialties of surgical pathology include the following:

See also

Notes and references

Bibliography

External links