Vol 1, No 1 (2018)

Pathology by definition is the study of disease originating from the Greek “pathos” - “suffering” and “ology” - “study of”. In medicine, it is the branch of medical science that studies the causes and effects of diseases. Advances in the field of pathology first led to the establishment of anatomic pathology as a separate discipline. Further advances have made it necessary for pathologists to sub-specialize in the field of oncology. Tumor pathology is no longer the discipline that recognizes the presence of a tumor and determines the morphological/patho-logical characteristics of the tumor. Advances in genomic technologies have resulted in better understanding of the biology of tumors forming the basis of “oncopathology” (“onco” originating from the Greek “onkos” - tumor). Oncopathology combines precision oncology with the predictive pathology tailored for each individual, as it is key to translate the prognostic biomarkers into predictive biomarkers to improve the efficacy of clinical therapeutics in the management of cancer. This article highlights the recent developments and underlines the needfor the discipline of oncopathology (and a journal devoted to it).

Diagnosis of melanocytic neoplasms is one of the most challenging problems in pathomorphology. This can be explained by a significant diversity of melanocytic nevi and skin melanoma, unclear diagnostic criteria, and varying severity of signs in different neoplasms. A discrepant expert opinion and low reproducibility of certain diagnoses pose a significant problem. However, there is a particular type of diagnostic errors associated with misinterpretation and incorrect practical application of fundamental terms. The article is devoted to the analysis of the most common errors of this type.

Background. Cerebro-spinal fluid cytology is a “golden standart” for diagnostics of primary and metastatic brain tumors, and allows to increase their detectability along with other contemporary methods. However there are some limitations for cytologic method due to small volume of specimen and sparse cellularity. According to literature sensitivity of cytological diagnosis varies from 41.3 to 60 %, which depends on distance from the brain lesion and leptomeningeal spread degree. Metastatic tumour cells are most commonly diagnosed in cerebrospinal fluid, though primary brain tumours are leading. To detect and define a histologic type of metastatic tumour cells in cerebrospinal fluid and clarify their histogenesis an immunocytochemical (ICC) diagnostic is possible to use. Objective: to evaluate the capability of cytomorphological and ICC diagnostics in metastatic brain lesions. Materials and methods. We performed 86 cytological examinations in 39 patients (11 males and 28females aged between 31 and 69 years) diagnosed with breast cancer (n = 24), lung cancer (n = 6), melanoma (n = 5), uterine cancer (n = 1), pancreatic cancer (n = 1), thyroid cancer (n = 1) and pleomorphic soft tissue liposarcoma (n = 1). Results. After ICC examination, several indeterminate results (5 cases of breast cancer and 1 case of metastatic melanoma) were confirmed to be positive; three samples from patients with breast cancer were found to have false negative cytological results. Therefore, the use of ICC examination increased the sensitivity of cytological diagnostics to 81.5 %. Conclusion. ICC significantly expands the capability of cytomorphological analysis of cerebrospinal fluid.

Low-grade fibromyxoid sarcoma is a relatively rare tumor of deep soft tissue. The difficulties of diagnostics, morphological, immunohisto-chemical and “typical” clinical pictures of this pathology are considered in the article. An algorithm for the differential diagnosis of low-grade fibromyxoid sarcoma and myxoid liposarcoma is given on the example of the clinical case in which the final diagnosis was verified after 40 years from the manifestation of the disease.

Radical prostatectomy (RPE) has been considered the gold standard method for the surgical treatment of localized prostate cancer, recommended by the European Association of Urologists. One of the main aims of pathologists is to obtain the maximum amount of prognostic information after RPE, which is crucialfor the prognosis and optimal treatment strategy. Therefore, it is very important to standardize surgical procedures as well as the process of morphological examination (including the system of results reporting) after RPE. The morphological report should include information on the tumor location, its spread, Gleason score, group grading, pTNM stage, presence of extraprostatic extension and the status of resection margins.