Role of a Pathologist in diagnosis and management of disease

Pathology deals with STUDY and DIAGNOSIS of disease. Pathology (trunk) connects the basic medical sciences (roots) to different clinical specialties (branches)

  • Role in Diagnosis
    • A pathologist helps the clinician to diagnose a disease by examining the patient’s blood or body fluids or any other tissue.
    • Eg: Biopsy, Peripheral blood smear examination, Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC), Peritoneal fluid examination etc.
  • Role in Management of disease
    • Assess effectiveness of treatment through different laboratory tests
    • Eg:
      • Effectiveness of therapy in iron deficiency anemia through Reticulocyte count (retic count will increase if therapy is effective).
      • Peripheral blood smear examination for Blast cells (neoplastic cells) in treatment of Acute Leukemia (Blast cells will reduce in number during treatment)
  • Role in study of disease
    • Through research to find out cause, pathogenesis, diagnosis and effectiveness of treatment of disease.
    • Eg:
      • Use Immunohistochemistry in biopsy specimens to find out new therapeutic targets in a malignancy.
  • Role in administration
    • As a leader of various laboratory teams.
    • Eg:
      • Head of Cytopathology lab, histopathology lab etc.
  • Main subspecialty labs in Pathology
    • These are the most common labs which function under a Pathologist.
      • Hematopathology
        • Deals with study of cells in blood
        • Eg: peripheral blood examination, bone marrow studies etc
      • Cytopathology
        • Deals with study of single cells which are found in body fluids or which are scraped or aspirated from areas of the body with suspected disease
        • Eg: FNAC, Body fluid cytology
      • Histopathology
        • Deals with study of Tissue
        • Eg: Biopsy
      • Clinical Pathology
        • Mainly deals with Body fluid cell count, differential count, Urine examination, Stool examination etc.
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