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ANATOMIC PATHOLOGY

Office Hours:

8:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday
8:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m., Saturday

Telephone:

617-732-7510 General Pathology Office
617-732-7536 Women's & Perinatal Pathology
617-732-7514 Chairman's Office
617-732-6791 Administration
617-732-7532 Neuropathology
617-732-4715 Cytology
617-732-7981 Cytogenetics

Nights, Weekends, and Holidays

For the on-call Resident or Fellow please page the following:

Chief Resident BB - 11661
Senior Resident on Surgical Service (daytime only) BB - 11514
Daytime Frozen Sections BB - 11601
Daytime Gyn-Path Frozens BB - 11805
Nighttime Frozen Sections BB – 11554
Weekend Frozen Sections BB – 32765
Neuropath BB - 11660
Hematopath (daytime only) BB - 11659
Saturday on-call BB - 11285
Sunday on-call BB – 11765

Requisition Forms: Available at the main office on Amory 3, Rm. AL3-117; ample supply also available in operating rooms, endoscopy suites, cardiac catherization labs, dermatology, etc.

Specimen Delivery: Laboratories on Amory 3: Surgical Pathology (Room # 106), Women's & Perinatal (Room # 129)

Emergency Procedures: Page Resident-On-Call through hospital page operator, 617 732-6660.

Special Procedures: Infectious (HIV, Jacob-Creutzfeld, hepatitis, tuberculosis) and hazardous (radioisotopic-contaminated) specimens must be so labeled and brought to the attention of the pathologist.

Subspecialty Services Available in Addition to General Surgical & Obstetric/Gynecologic Pathology:

• Breast pathology
• Cardiovascular pathology
• Dermatopathology
• Gastrointestinal pathology
• Hematopathology
• Male genitourinary pathology
• Molecular diagnostics
• Neuropathology
• Perinatal pathology
• Pulmonary pathology
• Renal pathology
• Soft tissue tumor pathology

Consultations on Outside Specimens

Review of material by one or more of our pathologists with comprehensive adjunct special studies may be requested at any time on slides and/or blocks of histo- or cytopathologic material previously prepared and/or diagnosed at an outside institution.

Special Studies Available

• Histology special stains
• Electron microscopy (transmission)
• Immunohistochemistry (immunofluorescence and immunoperoxidase techniques)
• In-situ hybridization
• Reverse transcriptase - PCR
• Cytogenetics

Availability of Results

Results of diagnostic pathology interpretations are available to the clinician generally within 48 hours for small biopsies and excisional specimens and within 72 hours for large resections. Rush services are available upon special request. Pathology reports are availble to clinicians on the BWH Hospital Information System (Clinical Information) via the patient's name and hospital identification number. Preliminary reports are often available in BICS before the final report.

Frozen Section-Intraoperative Consultations

Frozen sections 1) provide rapid gross or microscopic diagnoses to guide intra- or perioperative patient management, and 2) allow rapid processing tissue for special studies to be used for diagnosis (e.g., cytogenetics or EM) or treatment (hormone receptor analysis). The frozen section room is staffed by a senior pathologist and a resident at all times.

Specimen Submission

Submit routine biopsy tissue specimen in biopsy container with buffered formalin, in volume at least ten times the volume of the specimen in a tightly capped leak proof container. Some biopsy specimens either require fixation other than fomalin, e.g., bone marrow biopsies are fixed in Zenker's acetic fixative (indicate time placed in fixative on container), or the entire specimen (large specimens, hematologic specimens as lymph nodes biopsied for lymphoma) or parts of specimens (renal biopsies, soft tissue tumors) must be submitted fresh (refrigerate, transport outside cases promptly on "wet" ice to pathology); additional detail is provided below. Print patient's name/identification on specimen container. Submit with a completed Tissue Pathology Requisition, including clinical history.

The specimen should not be burned by cautery or crushed by forceps, hemostats, or other instruments. The specimen should not be washed with water; nor should it be allowed to dry out. When individual identity of multiple biopsies is required, place each specimen into a separate, properly labeled bottle.

The type of fixative must be identified on the container. The time of placing the specimen in the fixative should be included when appropriate (e.g., for fixatives containing mercury, such as Zenker's, or if rush processing is requested).

If orientation will be important for the evaluation of the specimen (e.g., malignant tumors for which re-excision of positive or close margins is possible), preferably the surgeon should orient the specimen with a pathology resident in the frozen section room or else external markers must be used to provide this information for the pathologist. Specimens for microbiologic culture are best taken in the operating room, and cannot be done on a fixed specimen.

Specimens Requiring Special Techniques