As a Biomedical Scientist I agree with you totally. One of the weaknesses of Biomedical scientists performing the 'grossing' is that the original evidence at dissection is lost to the Pathologist (that is until that Time Biomedical Scientists carry out the interpretation). Taking digital photos at all stages of dissection retains the evidence for the reporting Pathologist.
I did this for many years when dissecting samples for my Pathologist; saved drawing diagrams. I guess you'd agree that 80% of all interpretations could be carried out by a Biomedical Scientist (Histotech) once competency is attained and the envelope of responsibility is agreed. It's happened in Cytopathology in the UK! Kemlo Rogerson MSc MIBiol CBiol CSci DMS FIBMS -----Original Message----- From: histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Sate Hamza Sent: 18 April 2009 06:37 To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Subject: Re: [Histonet] Gross Photography As a pathologist, I am a strong proponent of ample gross photography in the cutting room. When I first started in my current place, I thought that not much gross photography was being done. This has increased in recent years in our center. I always encourage our residents to take digital gross photographs. I recently bought an easy to use digital camera and gave it as a gift to our cutting room to encourage more digital photographs. I think that the availability of easy to use digital cameras has made taking pictures much easier. A picture is a great tool for documentation and for communication. No matter how skillful and expressive the gross description is, a picture can make things much easier for sign out. If sections need to be mapped for margins or other considerations, one can take a digital picture, make a quick print out of it and map the sections on it. Such pictures are so helpful, for example, for excisions of flat pigmented lesions from sun-damaged skin. Gross-microscopic correlation can help so much in assessing margin status (this can be so difficult with microscopy alone). It also helps in excisions of vulvar lesions/tumors and in irregularly shaped complex excisions from any site. The digital photos can be taken quickly. They do not need to be textbook quality. The goal usually is to facilitate communication and facilitate the sign-out process. The pictures that our PAs take are placed on a network server in folders that are named with the accession number. The printouts with sections mapped are kept in a binder in the cutting room where a pathologist can find them when the need arises. Sate On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Joe Nocito <jnoc...@satx.rr.com> wrote: > like Mike, > we only photograph unusual specimens. Seems photographing specimens has > become less and less important. Kind of like autopsies. > -- Sate Hamza, MD, FRCPC Dermatopathologist Winnipeg, Canada _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet