Tumor Diagnosis: Practical approach and pattern analysis PDF

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THE AIM OF THIS BOOK

The aim of this book is to aid pathologists in arriving at diagnoses or differential diagnoses of tumors and tumor-like conditions in day-to-day practice.

Traditionally, when confronted by a difficult or unfamiliar case, pathologists may have to search either general or specialist reference texts for a ‘best-fit' description. This problem may be compounded in some cases by uncertainty of the precise tissue of origin (e.g. in mediastinal or retroperitoneal biopsies). Although the majority of reference texts used by histopathologists are organized according to anatomical location and underlying pathogenesis (i.e. inflammatory, neoplastic, etc.), histopathological diagnoses are made by interpretation of microscopic features that often can be categorized into particular patterns or appearances.

This book puts these fundamental issues into practice. The approach is simple, and the book takes an appearance-orientated approach in addition to the usual system-orientated method. It thus attempts to mirror the diagnostic approach used by the pathologist in practice – that is, an analysis of architectural and cytological features, special stains and other auxiliary techniques in the context of knowledge of the clinical background of the case. In this book, therefore, the microscopic patterns are the most important determinant factor in approaching the correct diagnosis.

Although disease exists as a spectrum, with many gray areas of overlap, pathologists are required in practice to attempt to place individual cases into diagnostic pigeon holes, particularly in the case of tumors and tumor-like conditions, in order to allow their clinical colleagues to make decisions about any subsequent management of the patient. Here, for ease of practical use, diseases have been divided into diagnostic ‘entities' as described in the histopathology literature.