Category: PathologyOutlines.com Updates

24 March 2023: Weekly Roundup #116

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. 2022 Year in Review Video

We have posted a YouTube video highlighting the significant changes that were made to PathologyOutlines.com in 2022. View it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itFpiInjRrQ.

2. What’s New in Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology E-Newsletter

Make sure to sign up for our What’s New in Pathology newsletter at pathologyoutlines.com/subscribe.html. The upcoming newsletter, to be sent out next week, is What’s New in Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology 2023: Guidelines for Molecular Testing. You can view our previous What’s New in Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology newsletter here and our other subspecialty newsletters here.

Read our previous What’s New in Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology newsletter here.

3. Curing Cancer Network: Social Media Accounts

We are now posting interesting images of malignancies on our Curing Cancer Network social media accounts. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

17 March 2023: Weekly Roundup #115

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. Informatics

We are strengthening our Informatics, digital & computational pathology chapter with our revised topic on AP Laboratory information systems by Drs. Jonah and Parwani. Let Dr. Pernick know of any suggested new topics at Nat@PathologyOutlines.com.

2. Image Contest

We have started a contest for the best Directory image. Instructions and voting are at surveymonkey.com/r/favorite_image. Voting ends on April 30, 2023. Email any questions to Directory@PathologyOutlines.com.

Some of the images from our Directory image contest!

3. Curing Cancer Network: Cancer Prevention

Replacing a poor diet with more nutritious foods has sizable health benefits at any age. The Washington Post (October 18, 2022, O’Connor) reports a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that shows “people can gain sizable health benefits at any age by cutting back on highly processed foods loaded with salt, sugar and other additives and replacing them with more nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, lentils, seafood and whole grains.” In the study, researchers followed roughly 74,000 people between the ages of 30 and 75 for over 2 decades and found that “people who had consistently high diet scores were up to 14% less likely to die of any cause during the study period compared to people who had consistently poor diets.”

Eating fiber alters the microbiome. It may boost cancer treatment too because the composition of the gut microbiome appears to influence whether immunotherapy is successful (The Washington Post: Eating fiber alters the microbiome. It may boost cancer treatment, too. [Accessed 16 March 2023]).

10 March 2023: USCAP 2023

PathologyOutlines.com is pleased to attend USCAP 2023 in New Orleans on March 13 – 15. Stop by booth #122 for our great felt tip markers and other giveaways. Review or add your Directory profile and vote for our Directory image contest. Pose for a picture or record a video. Sign up for our What’s New or other newsletters. Learn about becoming an Author. Say hello to Dr. Pernick and our staff. Tell us how we can make the website better.

Be sure to also stop by our poster, abstract #2492, poster #93, “The Pathology Job Market Post-COVID: Where are We Now?,” on Monday, March 13, from 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. at the New Orleans Convention Center in Exhibit Hall B, authors Debra Zynger and Nat Pernick.

We look forward to meeting you!

3 March 2023: Weekly Roundup #114

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. Worldwide Directory of Pathologists

Our Directory profiles now have links for the institutions and subspecialties selected. For example, our Editor-in-Chief Dr. Raul Gonzalez has links on his profile for Emory University and GI / liver that show all other pathologists in the Directory who are at Emory or specialize in GI / liver subspecialty. See the blue box at pathologyoutlines.com/directory for information on adding or changing your free Directory profile.

2. PathologyOutlines.com E-Newsletters

Are you getting the e-newslettters from PathologyOutlines.com that you want? The list of available e-newsletters / e-blasts is at pathologyoutlines.com/subscribe.html. You can try subscribing or editing your entry. For some people, however, that does not work. If not, email Comments@PathologyOutlines.com and tell us what emails you want to receive.

3. Curing Cancer Network: American Cancer Society – Annual Report

The American Cancer Society published its annual report to the nation on the status of cancer on October 27, 2022. It concludes that “Cancer death rates continued to decline overall, for children, and for adolescents and young adults, and treatment advances have led to accelerated declines in death rates for several sites, such as lung and melanoma.” See Cancer 2022;128:4251 for the remainder of the report.

24 February 2023: Weekly Roundup #113

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. New Editorial Board Appointments

Kimberley J. Evason, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Kimberley Evason was recently appointed to our Editorial Board for Gastrointestinal Pathology. Dr. Evason is a physician-scientist and Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Utah. She obtained her M.D. and Ph.D. through the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis. She then completed her Anatomic Pathology residency, fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology, and postdoctoral research training at University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Jared Ahrendsen was recently appointed to our Editorial Board for Neuropathology. Dr. Ahrendsen is an Assistant Professor of Pathology of Neuropathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chciago. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He then completed a combined Anatomic Pathology / Neuropathology residency and fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he also served as Chief Resident. He also completed a fellowship in Forensic Pathology at the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. His research interests include molecular diagnostics of brain tumors, trauma related neuropathology and the utilization of postmortem tissue to better understand human neurologic disease.

2. Informatics

Learn about Informatics, digital & computational pathology at pathologyoutlines.com/informatics.html. Make sure to read our topic on Computational pathology fundamentals & applications, written by Yomna Amer, M.B.B.Ch. and Anil Parwani, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A.

3. Potential PathologyOutlines.com App

We are considering setting up a free mobile app. It would resemble what is currently available when using the website on mobile but, at least initially, the topics would be limited to the most important sections and we would try to improve formatting. Email Nat@PathologyOutlines.com with any suggestions.

For mobile use of the website, there is no option to convert to the standard home page, header and footer. Our decision to have mobile pages conform to the screen size apparently eliminated that option. We have added more links to the “Other links” tab on our homepage so you should be able to access all important pages.

17 February 2023: Weekly Roundup #112

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. What’s New in Pathology Newsletter

Our next What’s New newsletter, discussing bone & soft tissue molecular pathology, will be emailed soon (to be followed by our hematopathology newsletter). Sign up for this and other newsletters by visiting our Newsletter page. These free newsletters are written by our Editorial Board, distributed by email every 3 months or so and posted on our Newsletter page. We never give out your email addresses to anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time.

2. Website Traffic

Last month (January 2023), we averaged 58,815 visits per day and had a record number of page views (4,225,758). Thanks for your support. 

3. Fellowships

What states have the most Fellowship ads listed on our website? The top 10, as of February 7, 2023, are as follows: 

Note that we count each year with an opening as a separate fellowship.

4. Worldwide Directory of Pathologists

Pathologists, make sure you have a Directory profile at pathologyoutlines.com/directory so you can vote for your favorite Directory image. The 3 winners will get gift cards of $250, $150 and $100 and will be publicized on our website. More instructions on the Directory contest will be announced by the end of February. 

Our Directory now has 17,000+ profiles, including all known academic pathologists in the U.S. and Canada (except those that opted out). We want to add your profile, as long as you meet our criteria. We plan to continue these free profiles for the life of the pathologist plus 5 years. 

See the blue box on the Directory home page for instructions to sign up or modify your profile.

3 February 2023: Weekly Roundup #111

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. USCAP 2023

Visit us next month at USCAP, Booth #122! We look forward to meeting you.

2. Mastodon Account / Social Media

Follow our PathologyOutlines.com account on Mastodon, a Twitter alternative, at med-mastodon.com/@pathout. The header on PathologyOutlines.com has icons for all of our social media accounts in the upper right corner, next to the Search box.

3. Curing Cancer Network: American Cancer Society – Updated Mission Statement

The American Cancer Society has updated its mission statement, which now reads as shown below:

“The mission of the American Cancer Society is to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer.” See https://lnkd.in/gbKwWdS6.

The prior mission statement was “to save lives, celebrate lives, and lead the fight for a world without cancer.” 

While I don’t know the details regarding the change, I am pleased with this new, more rational mission statement that reflects that cancer is an inherent part of our biology that cannot be vanquished. I had previously criticized the phrase “world without cancer”:

“The human body is composed of a myriad of interacting networks positioned at critical states, which is required for network flexibility to enable embryonic development, the inflammatory response to trauma and infection and the capability for our species to evolve to a changing environment. However, the tradeoff for maintaining these critical states is that cancer, a type of catastrophic systemic failure, is inevitable. We can reduce its incidence, we can detect it earlier and we can treat it more effectively but attaining a “world without cancer” (American Cancer Society, accessed 13Nov20) is not possible.”

27 January 2023: Weekly Roundup #110

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. Informatics

Learn about Informatics, digital & computational pathology at pathologyoutlines.com/informatics.html. View our Spectral imaging topic, recently written by Aisha Abdelhafez, M.Sc. and Anil Parwani, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A.

2. Top Topics of 2022

11 of our topics reached more than 100,000 views in 2022, a new record:

  1. Basal cell carcinoma (143,028 views)
  2. Endometrioid carcinoma (132,439)
  3. Fibroadenoma (119,546)
  4. Pleomorphic adenoma (112,332)
  5. Leiomyoma-general (108,854)
  6. Dermatofibroma (cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma) (108,488)
  7. Meningioma (106,805)
  8. Neurofibroma-general (104,319)
  9. Invasive urothelial carcinoma (101,073)
  10. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (100,269)
  11. Schwannoma (100,175)

3. Top Countries

We now have posted visits by country in 2022 on our Statistics page. The top 10 countries by traffic are as follows:

  1. United States (1,463,246 users)
  2. Indonesia (795,776)
  3. India (605,835)
  4. United Kingdom (194,434)
  5. Philippines (159,044)
  6. Canada (116,659)
  7. Nepal (109,367)
  8. Australia (104,195)
  9. Mexico (96,286)
  10. Germany (95,852)

4. PubMed Links

We are making a small change to PubMed links. Currently, some are blue and others are green. While green links were for journal articles that were free full text for everyone, it turns out that this changes over time. Going forward, all new links created will be blue.

20 January 2023: Weekly Roundup #109

Here’s what you need to know about PathologyOutlines.com this week:

1. Worldwide Directory of Pathologists Ambassadors

Do you want to promote the pathologists at your institution? If so, consider becoming a Directory Ambassador! As Ambassador, you help ensure that the Directory includes all practicing pathologists for your institution and otherwise assist in making the Directory as accurate as possible. Ambassadors can be residents, fellows, faculty or staff, can split the work with other ambassadors and don’t have to review all the pathologists at the same time. Ambassadors are not paid but are listed on this page, get a gift at the time of the annual USCAP meeting and are appreciated by pathologists at their institution for helping promote their work.

2. Curing Cancer Network: How Cancer Kills

We have updated our essay, How Cancer Kills. See an excerpt below:

“Our strategic plan aims to reduce U.S. cancer deaths from 600,000 (projected cancer deaths in 2022) to 100,000 per year. To reach this ambitious goal, we must better understand how cancer actually kills people. This essay proposes that cancer often kills indirectly by promoting marked physiologic disruptions in life’s essential networks; however, physicians can prevent these deaths by correcting the network changes even before the cancer itself is treated. In addition, advanced cancer kills by creating a sense of futility, which causes individuals and the medical system to give up the fight.”

3. Screening Colonoscopies

Dr. Pernick appeared on Channel 7 (Detroit) discussing how patients with private insurance or Medicare should not be charged for screening colonoscopies under the Affordable Care Act. Watch the video and read the article here. His blog about his experience is here.

4. Website Traffic

For 2022, PathologyOutlines.com averaged 54,904 sessions (visits) per day, an increase of 10.9% over 2021. New traffic records for 2022 include 20,039,946 total sessions, 6,151,434 users, 4,299,793 home page views and an incredible 45,164,115 total page views. Thanks for your support and suggestions to improve the website.

Currently, statistics are obtained using Google Analytics 3, which is changing to Google Analytics 4 in July 2023. Most statistics will be comparable but some may change based solely on the methodology.

13 January 2023: New Editorial Board Appointments

Several pathologists have recently been appointed or promoted to our Editorial Board. For a comprehensive list of our Editors, see our Editorial Board page.

Dr. Jonathan D. Ho has been promoted from the Editorial Board to our new Deputy Editor in Chief for Dermatopathology. Dr. Ho is Jamaican and completed his M.B.B.S. at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. After working as a dermatology registrar at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston Jamaica, he completed specialist training in Dermatology and fellowship training in Dermatopathology in the International Graduate Training Program at Boston University School of Medicine. He is ICDP-UEMS board certified in Dermatopathology. He currently serves as the Co-director of the Dermatology residency program and the Director of Dermatopathology at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. His research interests include scarring and other disorders of fibrosis, complex medical dermatology and skin disease in richly pigmented skin. 

Dr. Josephine Dermawan has been appointed to our Editorial Board for Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology and Molecular Pathology. Dr. Dermawan is an Associate Staff at Cleveland Clinic Robert J. Tomsich Institute of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She completed her Anatomic and Clinical Pathology residency and Bone and Soft Tissue Pathology fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. She subsequently did a Molecular Genetic Pathology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Kyle Devins has been appointed to our Editorial Board for Gynecologic Pathology. Dr. Devins is an attending physician in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. After obtaining his medical degree at SUNY Upstate Medical University, he completed residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, followed by fellowships in Selective Surgical Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the faculty in 2022. Dr. Devins provides diagnostic evaluation of gynecologic, genitourinary and breast specimens. His research seeks to improve the understanding and classification of ovarian, uterine and peritoneal neoplasia, particularly mesenchymal and sex cord-stromal tumors.

Dr. P.J. Cimino has been appointed to our Editorial Board for Neuropathology. He is a Pathologist-Scientist and Head of the Neuropathology Unit for the Surgical Neurology Branch in the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Cimino obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the combined Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the University of Washington, Seattle. He then completed a combined Anatomic Pathology residency and Neuropathology fellowship training program at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Cimino was an Assistant Professor on the Physician-Scientist track in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Washington, Seattle.