Pathology Fundamentals Quiz

Overview of Pathology

• Pathology is the study of suffering, which involves the scientific study of diseases and connects clinical practice and basic sciences.
• It deals with four aspects of any disease process, including etiology, pathogenesis, morphology, and clinical expression.
• Pathology is continuously evolving, and new findings can improve our understanding of different disease processes.
• The ultimate goal of pathology is to identify the cause of diseases and their effects to help prevent diseases and find successful therapy.
• Etiological factors are multiple and can be divided into intrinsic-genetic causes and extrinsic causes.
• Pathogenesis is the sequence of events from the initial stimulus to disease development, and understanding it is essential to develop new therapies.
• Morphology means abnormal anatomy, and it can be gross, microscopic, radiologic, or molecular.
• Clinical manifestation refers to the signs and symptoms of the disease process, but many diseases can be asymptomatic until they progress to an advanced stage.
• The two main fields of pathology are experimental pathology and clinical pathology, and the major subdivisions of clinical pathology include histopathology, cytopathology, hematopathology, medical microbiology, immunopathology, chemical pathology, medical genetics, toxicology, and forensic medicine.
• Morbid anatomy is not a separate field of pathology, and it is done by histopathologists to study diseases by examining the external and internal body after death.
• The histopathologic techniques include gross pathology, routine light microscopy, histochemistry, immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence, electron microscopy, biopsy, frozen section, and cytology.
• Pathology is best learnt in two stages, including general pathology and systemic pathology, and the principles of general pathology must be understood before studying systemic pathology.