The Need For Greater Education of Medical Scientists in Histopathology Laboratories

As you can tell from the title I am an advocate for the ongoing job-specific training of medical / biomedical scientists in pathology and in particular histopathology (as this is the area of which I am involved).

 

By “job-specific” I really do mean that. My experience with ongoing education of medical scientists within many laboratories involves mainly attending conferences which in fact do provide presentations on many interesting and varying medical subjects but do not translate into increased knowledge within the pathology sector that they are employed. Yet attendance at these conferences do fulfill the “ongoing education” condition of governing accreditation bodies. For example a conference attended by this author attended by many medical scientists of employed over all the different disciplines (eg. histology, microbiology, haematology), had many interesting talks (eg. the effect of a local major natural disaster and the providing of medical assistance from neighbouring countries), but he could not see how these talks would translate to increased laboratory knowledge beneficial to the conference attendee. 

It appears to this author that there is very limited opportunities offered to pathology laboratory employees which in turn is resulting in these employees not possessing an ever-growing knowledge base of their chosen discipline. Another example observed by this author is the huge majority of histopathology scientists not being able to recognise the simplest of skin tumours histologically (eg. BCC, SCC, melanoma), which is the ‘bread and butter’ of skin pathology.

What is the purpose of scientists being able to recognise tumours histologically I hear you say? If scientists can recognise these simplest of tumours, this talent can be put to a number of uses including cutting deeper levels on initial sections that are non-diagnostic before the initial sections are given to the pathologist thus increasing the efficiency of reporting. This example of course depends on the confidence of the pathologist to trust the scientist to recognise a case that requires deeper levels. 

Thank you very much for reading this post and hopefully you found it of interest.

PS. keep a look out for www.skinpathonline.com (up and running soon)

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Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy. Is it useful?

 I have recently read an article that caught my eye and somewhat relates to skin pathology.

The article was entitled  ‘Axillary Dissection vs No Axillary Dissection in Women With Invasive Breast Cancer and Sentinel Node Metastasis’ and was in the February 9th, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Although this relates to patients with breast cancer I wonder if there will be any overflow of this argument into the ongoing debate over the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) with regards to patients with melanoma.

The results of the aforementioned study showed “among patients with limited sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastatic breast cancer treated with breast conservation and systemic therapy, the use of SLND (sentinel lymph node dissection) alone compared with ALND (axillary lymph node dissection) did not result in inferior survival.” This result has also been mirrored in multiple melanoma SLNB studies. Many people have and still continue to argue over the pros (eg. without a SLNB it is not possible to accurately stage melanoma according to international guidelines) and cons (eg. the impact of complete lymph node dissection (CLND) on a patient’s immune capability).

I wonder if in the future SLNB will remain standard practice or if it was a good idea at the time.

Many thanks for reading and hopefully this post will get some interesting comments and I am sure it will.

Also don’t forget to follow me on twitter (@skinpathology)

www.skinpathonline.com (will be up in the near future)

PS. This is the link for the JAMA article (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/6/569.abstract)

Welcome to the first blogger post for SkinPathOnline

Welcome to the first blogger post for SkinPathOnline

Hello everybody,

Welcome to the inaugural SkinPathOnline blogger post. The blog will keep you up to date with the latest in all aspects of skin pathology (dermatopathology) including laboratory techniques and interesting articles that might be worthy of a read.

I will be posting weekly (time permitting) so everything should be fairly current. Please don’t hesitate to send any questions, queries, comments, whatever you feel like, to my email address (feedback@skinpathonline.com).

Also my website (www.skinpathonline.com) will be up and running in the near months. It will be a great site for anyone involved in histology from laboratory technicians, medical scientists, to pathologists. It will be a place to -  learn diagnostic tips, discuss techniques (eg. what worked and what did) and absolutely anything else. So keep an eye out and I will let you all know when it goes live.

PS – don’t forget to follow me on twitter (@skinpathology)