Surgical pathology

Surgical pathology is the significant and time-consuming area of practice for most anatomical pathologists. Surgical pathology involves gross and microscopic examination of surgical specimens, as well as biopsies submitted by surgeons and non-surgeons such as internal medicine specialists, clinical oncologists, medical subspecialists, dermatologists, and interventional radiologists.

The practice of surgical pathology allows for definitive diagnosis of disease (or lack thereof) in any case where tissue is surgically removed from a patient. This is usually performed by a combination of gross (i.e., macroscopic) and histologic (i.e., microscopic) examination of the tissue, and may involve evaluations of molecular properties of the tissue by immunohistochemistry or other laboratory tests.

The crucial information in the final histopathological report is the diagnosis of the subtype of the tumour (if present) as well as the evaluation of surgical margins, informing if the tumour was removed in total. Both, the diagnosis and surgical margins dictate further treatment.