Pathology, my chosen profession, is not what people think it is - you know, autopsies, riding around on motorcycles solving crimes, glamour... Well, if you want to know what a pathologist isn't, then have a look here

The reality is less exhausting but just as interesting! Pathology, although literally meaning 'the study of disease', is a branch of clinical medicine with three important components:

• Histopathology
  
• Cytology
  
• Autopsies
  

To this, one could also add research and teaching.

So, what are these? Well, I'll deal with them one at a time...

Histopathology

Histopathology is the diagnosis of disease by studying tissue samples (histology). These range from tiny biopsies (for instance, from someone's stomach taken by endoscopy) to organs removed at an operation (e.g. a colon containing a cancer). From these specimens, we select areas to take sections from, which are stained and examined under a microscope.

This is the major part of most pathologist's job. We're the people who tell other doctors what disease their patient has, whether it is benign (nice) or malignant (nasty), and whether or not it is out. Very few diagnoses of cancer are made without our help, and we play an essential role in deciding the correct treatment for an individual patient.

To put it another way - the buck stops here!

Cytology

Cytology is the diagnosis of disease from individual cells, such as cervical smears or fluid from cysts. This is much faster to perform than histology, but has more limited diagnostic abilities: generally, cytology is used as a rapid screening test to determine whether something is malignant or not, with further biopsy being used to get a definitive, histological diagnosis.