General Medical Information

Principles of Cancer Pathology

James L. Connolly, MD
Stuart J. Schnitt, MD
Helen H. Wang, MD
Janina A. Longtine, MD
Ann Dvorak, MD
Harold F. Dvorak, MD

Pathologists are physicians who are concerned primarily with the study of disease in all its aspects; that is, causation, diagnosis, pathogenesis, mechanisms, natural history, anatomic and biochemical features, progression, and prognosis. In many respects, therefore, pathologists are “doctors’ doctors,” consultants with specialized knowledge that can be helpful to the clinician who is caring directly for the patient. Nowhere in medicine is this adage more true than in the care of patients with cancer.

Pathologists engage in several types of activity: anatomic pathology, which includes surgical pathology, cytology, and autopsy pathology; clinical pathology, also known as laboratory medicine, that is, the direction of clinical laboratories; and experimental pathology or basic investigations of the pathogenesis of disease. However, these distinctions have become increasingly blurred as advances in technology such as immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and molecular biologic approaches to cancer diagnosis, have moved from the research laboratory into the clinic.