Pathologists and gastroenterologists
- Department of Gastroenterology, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Campus, Tel Aviv University, Israel
- Correspondence to: Professor Y Niv, Department of Gastroenterology, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Campus, Petach Tikva 49100, Israel; yniv{at}clalit.org.il
Are they using the same language?
Histopathology is the study of the cytological and histological structure of normal or diseased tissue. It is the most extensive field in medicine, serving almost all the other disciplines. The identification and quantification of tissue features has major implications for clinical diagnosis, management, and follow up,1 making evidence based cellular pathology one of the pillars of evidence based medicine. As the gold standard for diagnosis, histopathological findings must be accurate, reliable and reproducible, and the language must facilitate clear, direct communication among pathologists themselves and between pathologists and clinicians. This issue is particularly important in malignant disease, for proper evaluation, diagnosis, and management.2–5 This may be a particular problem in different countries and cultures. For example, two studies have reported a wide variation between Japanese and Western pathologists in the diagnosis of gastric cancer,6,7 particularly high grade dysplasia and invasive tumours.
“The identification and quantification of tissue features has major implications for clinical diagnosis, management, and follow up, making evidence based cellular pathology one of the pillars of evidence based medicine” …
