The pathology report

A pathology report is where the pathologist puts in writing what they found in a sample of tissue. A pathologist is a doctor trained to identify diseases by looking at cells and tissues under a microscope, and tissue is the material, made of cells, that every part of the body is built from.

For examination, the tissue goes through a few steps. First it's hardened inside a block of paraffin, a wax a lot like candle wax. Then that block is cut into very thin slices called sections, much like ham sliced paper-thin at the deli counter. Finally, the sections are stained with dyes that make it easier to tell apart the different parts of each cell.

What the pathologist sees is usually written up in parts. The gross description tells what the sample looks like to the naked eye, without a microscope. The microscopic description tells what shows up once it's under the microscope. And there's the final diagnosis, the name of what was found. When cancer is involved, this report is what gives the definitive diagnosis.