The rate of progress in di: diagnosis — the field of the pathologist—is so fast you can't keep up with it, a Chicago doctor declared Friday.
Dr. Coye C. Mason is commissioner of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists' commission on continuing education, which is sponsoring 35 workshops . and courses here on new techniques. The increasing complexity of the work of the pathologist — the doctorV doctor — is indicated, Mason said, by the fact that the equipment shipped here for the workshops is valued at $100,000. Mason reviewed topics under study at the workshops.
—A method of freezing and cut-; ting a section of tumor tissue, which determines malignancy within two or three minutes.
—New fluorescent antibody techniques for detecting the presence of bacteria-caused diseases. —Recent advance in matching blood types in order to eliminate incompatibility in blood given in transfusions.
—Early diagnosis of cancer in the female • genital tract by the Pap smear test has detected cancer in about four of every 1000 persons tested. This is diagnosis of women who are unaware they have cancer.
—The study of factors known to affect blood coagulation. It is still unknown exactly whv blood clots. —Studies of the lymph node, affected by over 100 different diseases.
—A variety of tests to detect cancer cells or early caacer signs in urine resulting from cancer of the kidney, bladder or other organs.
Diagnosis is the principal function of the pathologist, Dr. Mason stated. In addition to a knowledge of a vast variety of techniques and tests, the work of the pathologist now involves the use of radio isotope equipment and electron microscopes that can magnify a cell to 1000 times its actual size, he added.
Workshops at the Roosevelt Hotel and the Louisiana fefate University Medical School will continue tnrougn Sunday morning.
They follow a two-day session ©f the Louisiana Pathology Society at LSU.
Dr. Robert J. Thompson, Chicago pathologist, presented the society a generally optimistic view on lung diseases '— cancer, tuberculosis, and pneumonia.
Noting that lung cancer and tuberculosis are now pretty well under control, he also remarked on the low incidence of flue cases that develop into pneumonia. Pneumonia, the doctor said, complicates the virus infection of flu and usually results from the poor nutritional state of the patient.
This is especially true of the elderly patient, he added.
