Talk:Pathology/Archive 1

Jokes
The jokes are okay - hahahaha - but:
 * Do you have proof that pathologists are joked about more than orthopods?
 * Is there a reliable source for these jokes?

Just spoiling the fun. JFW | T@lk  22:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * When discussing medical jokes, no other specialty comes even close to pathology. Forget it. Don't even think about it. I'm serious. Dead serious. Emmanuelm 21:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Culled from article (not really appropriate without rewrite)

''== Pathologists work ==

Because the public rarely meets pathologists, their work is not well understood. Many people think they spend their days doing autopsies, which is very far from the truth. Autopsies represent less than 10% of the workload of a typical modern pathologist. Instead, they are responsible, along with medical technologists for medical laboratories. In other words, patients should know that what their doctor calls a "laboratory result" is not a number spewed by a black box. Instead, it is the personal opinion of a pathologist or a technologist. It is also important to understand that a different laboratory might produce a different opinion on the same specimen.

In addition to the diagnosis of patients and the administration of medical laboratories, pathologists often participate in the teaching of medical students (Pathology is a core course in the medical curriculum). Also, since all human tissues are under the responsibility of the Pathology laboratory, research involving human material usually involves the pathologist. Finally, the circulation of laboratory data is a central issue in medical informatics and the current tendency towards electronic medical records. '' --Light current 03:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Did I write something wrong? Please clarify your opinion. Emmanuelm 21:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Undiscussed and uninvited deletions
Next time you want to remove chunks of an article, like what you did to the pathology page for example, try discussing it in the talk page first. I reverted your deletions and asked you to clarify in the talk page. Emmanuelm 21:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Irrelevant material will always be removed not necessarily with notice.
 * Please note:

* If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it. * Only public domain resources can be copied without permission—this does not include most web pages. * See our policies and guidelines for more information on editing.


 * Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pathology"

I reverted most of the deletions by Light Current. In the future, I would appreciate a discussion. Emmanuelm 21:51, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The article is about pathology, not pathologists. It couldnt be clearer!BTW I didnt delete the material, I moved it here pending decision on its new home!

--Light current 21:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the pathologist page is redirected to this page, which is fine with me. Do you want to change this and create a new page? Emmanuelm 21:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The main reason for my changes was the the headings were totally wrong. Yes a new page should be created for pathologist--Light current 21:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You just reverted my reversion of your deletions, again without discussion. I am shocked by your insolence. 1. What do you know about pathology? 2. My headings were, in my opinion, a useful guide to the different part of this article; "Explanation" is not an informative chapter title. 3. You still did not tell me what was wrong with my "pathologist's work" chapter. 4. I think the page pathologist would be redundant; I believe you like to keep things simple, and so do I. If you want to create it nevertheless, I'll be glad to edit it. If not, please revert your latest reversion and stay out of this page. Very sincerely, Emmanuelm 22:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I wrote earlier "If you want to create it nevertheless, I'll be glad to edit it". Well, I have changed my mind. I am not contributing to Wikipedia anymore. Goodbye. Emmanuelm 04:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * As I said before, your headings are too large (font size). Please read the Manual of Style! Dont expect discussion on obvious errors! Pathologists work obviously relates to pathoilogists. I have put that on the pathologist page. Please dont be so sensitive!--Light current 22:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

More edits
Hopefully nobody's going to gripe at me for my edits. Emmanualm: be aware that wikipedia's guideline is that editors should be bold in editing pages. Most edits do not require permission. Deletion of large chunks of an article is an exception, but in this case Light current did move the material to the talk page for discussion, which is generally considered appropriate.--Srleffler 03:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * For the record, Srleffler, I have asked Light current twice what was wrong with my text, and twice he failed to answer (its all in this page). That's not what I call discussion. Emmanuelm 04:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry you feel that way. Perhaps he missed your question. It's not normal on Wikipedia for people to have to "explain" their edits, nor should you feel offended that someone else felt they could improve on what you wrote. It's part of the process. Everything gets tweaked/edited/massaged multiple times, and overall the quality improves. Light current's edits were mostly style-related. Your section headings didn't really correspond with Wikipedia's Manual of Style, so he was right to try to fix them. The dispute between you would have been much simpler if you had simply replaced the paragraphs he deleted instead of reverting all his changes including the entirely appropriate changes in font on the headings. I don't really know why he felt that pathologist should be separated from pathology. Perhaps that's how the articles for other medical specialties are organized. Anyway, I hope you will reconsider your departure. You clearly have a lot of knowledge you could share here and your contributions would be more than welcome.--Srleffler 07:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that chunks of text should be culled without any mention about what's wrong with them. The removed section needs sources and a bit of NPOV, but it is generally accepted that pathology is misperceived by the outside world (and even by physicians!) I can't imagine someone hasn't published a study of this. JFW | T@lk  19:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I can certainly understand Emmanuelm's reasoning for wanting to have a separate page relating to pathologist, and perhaps he didn't see the informaton about pathologist on the Anatomic pathology page. Prior to seeing this discussion, I had made a comment in the discussion section on the pathology page on how to restructure it. I agree, the original needed more NPOV. However, I think perhaps some expansion to the Anatomic pathology page in the pertinent area makes more sense, so in reality the page is most likely a bit redundant if the information is about a an anatomic pathologist is already there. I also agree with the delete without comment....the reason that didn't set with him is that it is a practice inherently alien to a pathologist....who always explains what is taken out (grin). To not do so is malpractice!! I am not fond of the phraseology that another name for pathology is "laboratory medicine", and would like to know the reference that came from. It represents one aspect of the practice of pathology, Clinical pathology. --JCyrisse 03:48, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Biology and medicine
Pathologists are doctors; when not involved in patient care, morphologist is a more apt term. I believe this is under-emphasized in the article. For example, part of the opening:

Within biology, it means specifically the study of the structural and functional changes in cells, tissues and organs that underlie disease.

Is Pathology not also part of medicine? After all, it's on Template:Medicine but not Template:biology-footer. I think the article should be changed to include more about medical pathology and not just research. --VashiDonsk 22:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, now the article has gone far to long in the opposite direction. There is an excessive focus on pathology as a subdiscipline of human medicin. In biology pathology is used widely as a term for the study of all disease, in fungi, plants as well as in humans and other animals. The non-human pathology section should be expanded.


 * I agree with you in general, although bear in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, so an article doesn't need to deal with all the possible meanings of a term, and should be focused instead on a unifying topic. There is no question that this article could benefit from more material on experimental pathology and verterinary / plant / fungal (?) pathology. IMHO it's an expansive and important topic, and the page could be significantly longer, although there definately are and should be subpages for most of the main subtopics. I don't see any need to trim the medical side. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 13:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The pathologist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and management of human disease by laboratory methods.

Pathologists function in three broad areas; as diagnosticians, as teachers, and as investigators. Fundamental to the discipline of pathology is the need to integrate clinical information with physiological, biochemical and molecular laboratory studies, together with observations of tissue alterations. Pathologists in hospital and clinical laboratories practice as consultant physicians, developing and applying knowledge of tissue and laboratory analyses to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of individual patients. As teachers, they impart this knowledge of disease to their medical colleagues, to medical students, and to trainees at all levels. As scientists, they use the tools of laboratory science in clinical studies, disease models, and other experimental systems, to advance the understanding and treatment of disease.

Pathology has a special appeal to those who enjoy solving disease-related problems, using technologies based upon fundamental sciences ranging from biophysics to molecular genetics, as well as tools from the more traditional disciplines of anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology and microbiology.

Tools of Pathology
Clinical chemistry is listed under tools of pathology as a red link, however there is already an article on biochemistry. As the two terms are usually synonymous, should clinical chem be replaced with biochem, with the appropriate link. Jars 17:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Biochemistry may be a colloquial pseudonym for Clinical Chemistry but with regards to Pathology it is overly broad. Biochemistry is the science of chemistry within Biology and does take into account Clinical Chemistry but I defy you to find a routine Clinical Chemistry laboratory performing investigations into the intricate biological pathways of carbohydrate metabolism in the strawberry! The term Clinical Biochemistry is a more correct Pseudonym and synonym for Clinical Chemistry which lessens the scope.

The_Biochemist ( http://www.minvent.ltd.uk |  http://www.elaboratory.co.uk )

--62.6.139.11 09:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Clinical chemistry is a subspeciality of pathology. Within clinical laboratories, Clinical Chemistry is the term used to describe a sub-section of the lab where specific types of laboratory assays are performed. Other sub-sections often include Microbiology, Molecular Pathology, Surgical Pathology, etc. Along these lines, subspecialty pathology textbooks include Burtis et al "Tietz Textbook of Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Diagnostics". Biochemistry, as eloquuetely discussed by the previous comment, is entirely different. Although biochemical assays are utilized within Clinical Chemistry, they are not synonymous. Well, at least they are not synonymous in my opinion. Hope that helps clarify a bit. (Although, it may obfuscate further. If so, I am willing to explain my opinion further.) Best regards. --Ziadp 14:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Focus on the way things are done in the US
Pathology is not exclusive to the United States and so I don't see why there is an explanation of the way pathology is organised in said country. It should be written from a more universal perspective than it is currently, taking the focus away from the US. Rrh02 18:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I tried to make the history 'universal' (OK it's eurocentric, but so is Western medicine). In talking about the subspecialties of pathology, it's hard not to use the terms of one country. This is the English language Wikipedia, so I think the U.S. is as good a choice as any. If someone wants to add 'pathology in the U.K.' or 'pathology in Canada' or australia or whatever, that could be interesting. Rustavo 10:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia do this for users. Is it a democracy or what? USA Pathology...heart disease that can harm our body and get sick of it can damage our tissue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.75.125.181 (talk) 19:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Deleted ' Other uses of "pathology" '
I deleted this section, and have repasted it below. It consists of dictionary-like definitions of the word "pathology" which have nothing to do with the core topic of the article - the study of disease and a related medical specialty. We can link to a disambiguation page at the top of the article if necessary.


 * Pathological is used to describe a person's actions in such a way as to credit the action to a disease process, e.g. pathological purchasing or pathological consumption, pathological narcissism, pathological liar, pathological gambling, pathological jealousy. Pathological is also used casually, to signify an abnormal state, e.g. a "pathological attitude" or a "pathological woman hater".


 * Pathological is also used in mathematics, physics, and statistics to describe an exceptionally (or awkwardly, or inconveniently) atypical example or set of data, often one which does not abide by rules or succumb to treatment that other similar cases usually do:
 * Pathological (mathematics)
 * Pathological science


 * Computer science uses this term in a slightly different sense with regard to the study of algorithms. Here, an input (or set of inputs) is said to be pathological if it causes atypical behavior from the algorithm, such as a violation of its average case complexity, or even its correctness. For example, hash tables generally have pathological inputs: sets of keys that collide on hash values. The term is often used pejoratively, as a way of dismissing such inputs as being specially designed to break a routine that is otherwise sound in practice.


 * Forensic Engineers often use the term to describe the underlying causes of distress in structures or machinery in order to specify repairs.

Rustavo 23:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Major revision
I made some major revisions to this article, including adding a history section and reorganising the medical specialty information. I think this has made it more readable, and helps clarify the relationship between "pathology" as a general field of study and "pathology" the medical specialty. I tried to incorporate existing content as much as possible, although I felt that the informal and POV tone of some of the previous medical specialty paragraphs was not appropriate. Thoughts, criticisms and additions are welcome! Rustavo 10:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed some new intro sections, "medical pathology" and "non-medical pathology," which had been added to the beginning of the article. They were, for the most part, redundant of existing sections. I tried to incorporate all non-redundant material in those section into the appropriate sections below. If the author of those sections or others feel that it would be better to place the "pathology as a medical subspecialty" section above the "history" section, we should discuss that - I think putting the history first helps explain how the medical field of pathology is related to the scientific tradition of pathology, which is an issue that confuses a lot of people.
 * Thanks Rustavo for a wondbhbjbjbljb casionally, although few pathologists outside of forensics spend more than 5% of their time on autopsies. Rustavo 16:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Rustavo, I just did a Medline search for the words "autopsy rate decline" and got 99 articles. Go ahead and quote your heart out :-)Emmanuelm 15:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

GA review
This article is well-written. The history section is excellent, and quite informative.


 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
 * 1) It is stable.
 * 2) It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
 * a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA):  c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
 * 1) Overall:
 * a Pass/Fail:
 * a Pass/Fail:

A couple areas of improvement would be the dental pathology and non-human pathology sections, as they are kind of short. Editors might want to review WP:CITE for tips on formatting reference citations. You might also want to keep an eye on external links, and maybe organize/prioritize the links a little better. There's not an overly large amount of linkspam (at least not yet ;-).

Cheers! Dr. Cash 00:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Frequently asked Questions

 * What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of anatomical pathology?


 * What are some of the current issues in pathology?


 * The first question is a non-starter. Advantages? It is a major diagnostic modality. Disadvantages? While usually right, pathologists reserve the right to wrong on occasions! I don't think we can answer that question with verifiable opinion.
 * The second question: that is a huge question that this page cannot answer in a nutshell. Every disease has current issues, e.g. sample quality/storage, methodological issues, service provision, scoring systems, multidisciplinary process... JFW | T@lk  23:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

New Section - Pathology as a science
Just added a new section, in which I tried to lay out basic scientific concepts in general pathology, as well as provide links from this article to build the web of pathology-related pages. I know that the scientific "pathology" described is still fairly human- (or perhaps vertebrate-) specific, but this is the area I'm familiar with, and I think it makes for the most conceptually coherent page. If others are still interested in working in plant and fungal path, I'm open to suggestions on how to do this. I may move some material from the "pathology as a medical specialty" section to more specific pages such as anatomical pathology and clinical pathology.

Also, the new section desperately needs some pictures! -RustavoTalk/Contribs 06:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Multi-page revision
I just conducted large revisions to two pages (Pathology and Anatomical pathology) and created a third (Surgical pathology) to better coordinate and define the content on these three closely related topics. As a result of the revision, material that focuses on the overall skills, certification, and practice of anatomic pathologists was concentrated in the page Anatomical pathology, while some of this content was trimmed from Pathology, which has a much broader scope. Content specifically realated to the skills, workflow, and subspecializations of surgical pathology were moved to the new page surgical pathology. I think this change is a significant improvement, but I welcome any feedback and additional editorial revisions. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 20:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Missing topic (Phytopathology)
There are anything about Phytopathology in this article. --Ricardo 15:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, there is a link to that page near the bottom (under non-human pathology). If you'd like to write a more complete summary paragraph of that topic for this page, please go ahead. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 03:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Pathology of Prostatitis NEEDED
Can someone please help on the Prostatitis page. The pathology of prostatitis, chronic prostatitis, and chronic pelvic pain syndromes needs to be better explained. Chronic prostatitis/CPPS IIIa is an inflammatory disease of unknown etiology. About 50% of all men with CPPS III also have urethral leukocytosis. Please explain the implications of the pathology. ReasonableLogicalMan 13:46, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Need help on inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology
I have started a new page called inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology and would like some help answering these questions: What are the inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? How many of them are there? What are the most common inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? What kind of inflammation is associated with inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? And how many kinds of inflammation patterns are there in inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? If anyone has the time to contribute it would be appreciated. After seeing the pictures here, I am also wondering if we could come up with a set of pictures showing the inflammatory patterns in the common inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology. ReasonableLogicalMan (Talk 20:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Pathology & Software
Suggest have a section for this Sanjiv swarup (talk) 15:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I known nothing about LIS, so I will not contribute much. Emmanuelm (talk) 19:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Choristoma is a specific tumor category
The section "Choristoma" under the section "Pathology as a science" seems out of context. A choristoma is a specific category of tumor, like carcinoma, sarcoma, hamartoma, lymphoma, etc. The entries under this heading like cell death, neoplasia, repair, are general disease processes, which make some sense under this heading. I would suggest removing the paragraph on choristoma, or make it an example under neoplasia (although it is technically not a neoplasm). Carcinomas, lymphomas/leukemias, and sarcomas are vastly more common than choristomas, and would be better examples of neoplasia. --Dfuerpo (talk) 15:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I too believe choristoma is out of place here. Be bold, delete it. I fixed the redirection of choristoma to hamartoma. Emmanuelm (talk) 16:59, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Major re-organization of the article
I used this article as an exercise to learn to apply the summary style using WP:transclusion of lead paragraphs. I admit that it is a bit experimental and that it forced me to create articles I would not have otherwise, but I like the result. For those not familiar with transclusion, the text you are reading in this article (the "summary" article) is, in fact, from other pages (the "main" articles), each clearly identified in the appropriate place. To edit the text, you must go to the main articles. Discussed here. Emmanuelm (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned to Emmanuelm on his talk page, I preferred the original form of the content on this page. I think in its current form, the page Pathology is too brief for such a large and significant topic, and I think many readers would prefer consolidated information rather than having to follow so many links. As Emmanuelm himself admits, some of the daughter pages seem forced and unnecessary (e.g. general pathology - what is the difference between this and plain ol' pathology?). Perhaps if more of the text from the newly created daughter pagers were present on this page, it would be closer to its original form and I might be happier with it. I am interested in other readers' thought on this. RustavoTalk/Contribs 05:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Rustavo, This reorganization was an exercise in application of the WP:SUMMARY and WP:LEAD styles using a new tool, WP:Transclusion. I understand your criticisms. In fact, I share some of your opinions. To be honest, however, these criticisms should be weighed against the several advantages of this format:
 * Reduction in duplications between the articles,
 * Reduction in the amount of maintenance work by editors (like you),
 * Improved clarity in the relationship between closely-related articles. This is particularly important for the non-pathologist reader.
 * There is room to improve the readability of the Pathology article by editing the lead paragraph of the various main ("daughter") articles. Alternatively, the "onlyinclude" markups could be moved to avoid the first, more general, sentence of the lead that is repeated several times. Either way, I am not ready to abandon this idea yet. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Title General Pathology needs to change?
Discussed in Talk:General pathology. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

General Pathology is a complete mess...
Unfortunately, this previously informative discussion of pathology has become a complete jumble of topics from medicine to basic plant science. It needs to be broken up into several different topics to be useful. 17 July 2008

Mass reversion to Dec 1 2008
This article has become a mess. I reverted it to its Dec 1st version by Gitler.

Please remember that this summary article is made up of transcluded lead paragraphs. To change its content, change the lead paragraph of the appropriate sub-article. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

i love branden —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.179.114.208 (talk) 20:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Experimental transclusion technique
The use of lead transclusions for section summaries has led directly to this article being delisted as a GA for lack of sources. This tequnique makes it much more difficult to improve articles, as an editor would have to source the entirety of all the subarticles to ensure the lead does not summarise anything uncited, or rewrite the leads so that instead of summarising the articles, they only cover whatever is cited. Hence i have removed the transclusions pending much wider input on this method, showing that there is consensus for this in spite of the drawbacks on article improving.YobMod 13:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)