Understanding Your Reports
The "Pathology Report" is a very important document that describes the Pathologist's findings of the examination of tissue or other materials that were submitted by your physician. This can be a skin biopsy from a dermatologist's office, a pap test from an OB/GYN office, a colon biopsy from a colonoscopy or any number of specimens that may have been removed or biopsied during surgery.
| To request a copy of your report: |
Please print the Patient Report Request, fill it out completely and fax it to
1-877-88-4path or mail it to:
4path, Ltd.
9050 W. 81st Street
Justice, IL 60458
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To ensure release of information is only to authorized individuals, reprints are only supplied to the patient and only to the address on their government supplied photo identification. We do not send reports reprints to 3rd parties. Should you wish a report for a physician, you may request one for yourself, photocopy it and submit it to the physician directly.
There are several sections to the pathology report. Depending on the institution, they may be in different order, but they are listed in the order they are present on the typical pathology report from 4Path.
Header: This provides standard information, including the name of the laboratory providing the service
Demographics: This section contains various identification information, including the name of the patient, date of birth, medical record number, case number, location of the patient, surgeon and which additional doctors will receive copies of the report.
Diagnosis: This section is the heart of the report. It is where the Pathologist lists the diagnoses on the tissue, after they have performed their examination.
Diagnosis Comment: This section is optional and may not be on every report. If there is information that the pathologist wants to convey to the surgeon, but is not part of the diagnosis, this may be where the pathologist can list that information.
Clinical Data and Specimens Submitted: This includes what specimens were sent, as listed by the surgeon. It also includes what the doctor thought was the diagnosis before the procedure was started (the "pre-operative diagnosis") and what they thought was the diagnosis after the procedure (the "post-operative diagnosis"). The submitting physician provides these.
Gross Description: This section describes the appearance of the material sent to pathology. It may include a description of the various different organs or samples, how they were submitted and how they were labeled. This often also includes a description of which samples were taken in the laboratory to be made into microscopic slides for examination under the microscope
Microscopic Description: This section describes the findings of the microscopic examination by the Pathologist. It can include information that is very important to the submitting physician for selection of appropriate follow up of the patient. If there are additional special studies performed, they can be described here. A summarized report (also know as a "synoptic report") may also be present in this section if the examination is of a cancer specimen with special reporting requirements.
In some routine cases a simple description that the microscopic examination was performed may be all that is provided, if the microscopic appearance of the tissue does not contribute additional information to the submitting physician. In cases where there is no microscopic examination, such as some normal tissues, then there will be no microscopic description given.
Illustrations: In virtually all cases, photographic illustrations of the specimen as seen by the naked eye (i.e. "gross examination") or by the microscope (i.e. microscopic examination) may be provided by the Pathologist.
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