Pathology of tumors in a pediatric age group and in adolescents in the light of newer diagnostic approaches
Abstract
Summary: Pathology diagnostics of tumors in childhood requires a long term experience. Since 1974 we started the Morphological Registry of Tumors in Childhood.
By the end of 2002 there are 3 864 children and adolescents up to 18 years of age with malignant tumors, 417 patients with tumors of uncertain biological properties and 3 242 children with benign tumors and diseases mimicking neoplasms. The registry serves as a source of education in the problematic, and as a source of information and preserved tissues for a continuous research.
Histopathological diagnosis is a basis for the diagnostic process and classification of tumors in children. In recent years a support of protein identification with the use of immunohistochemistry is necessary; diagnostics at the ultrastructural level is also useful; hybridization techniques and developing methods demonstrating molecular changes at the level of nucleic acids are becoming more important.
To achieve a complex laboratory approach to the diagnosis a close collaboration with departments of surgery becomes inevitable - the biologic material should be submitted fresh and sterile to the hands of a pathologist. The pathologist establishes the diagnosis and participates at the sampling of a representative tumor tissue for other specialized investigations - cytogenetics, flow cytometry and molecular diagnostics (DNA and RNA analysis).
Working in a team we achieve a precise histopathologic diagnosis and due to an interdisciplinary approach we may better characterize the nature of the tumors.