Pathologists: hidden heroes

Everyone thinks it's the doctors who save the lives, but what people don't realise is that the doctors would be stuck without their multi disciplinary team. The MDT consists of several other important members but pathologists certainly play a massively important role. People often see pathologists as these glamorous people who wander around their shiny labs until a brutal crime takes place which they are then expected to solve to save the rest of the city before the evil villain is able to do any more damage. Hate to shatter this illusion but no, most pathologists do not lead a life like these people...

In fact, there are branches of pathology which people are not even aware exist. Most people only know about forensic pathology and are convinced that pathologists are either off CSI or are crazy scientists who like to chop up dead people. Of course this is not the case. Pathologists work mostly on people who are still alive, in a branches of pathology which are massively important in hospitals. Two of these branches are called histopathology and haematology. 

Histopathology: the study of tissue sample in order to diagnose disease. 

Haematology: the study of the blood in order to diagnose disease. 

Obviously both of these studies are extremely important in hospitals in order for the doctors who are seeing patients to gain a more detailed insight into their condition. When people are admitted to hospital or are sent to get blood tests from their GP, the majority of them will not realise that behind the scenes are the pathologists carrying out all of the tests and research on their samples and that without them there is no way that they could be diagnosed as accurately or efficiently. 

So what do they do? Well pathologists supervise labs, interpret results, carry out patient consultations, do ward rounds, teach other doctors and carry out research among other things. It is clear that the hospitals could not run without these people, even though they are never mentioned as the heroes in all of the stories we hear. 

I recently read two really interesting stories on pathological cases dating back hundreds of years, which I personally found really fascinating;

• Pathologists can find themselves investigating all sorts of cases, such as how famous people died, hundreds of years in the past. For example, pathologists recently investigated the death of Beethoven, and found that in fact his own doctor may have killed him. We knew that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning but this pathologist found that he was in fact poisoned accidentally by his doctor, who punctured his abdomen to relieve him of an edema and used lead-laced poultice to seal the wounds. This resulted in Beethoven's liver absorbing the lead and causing him to suffer from cirrhosis. The most interesting part of this story, however, is the way in which the pathologists discovered this. He used samples of Beethoven's hair which fans had cut off on his deathbed. He formed a time line of his decline and discovered that the spikes in lead in his body were only on days which his doctor had visited. This pathologist clearly used his own depth of knowledge and problem solving to come to this conclusion. 
• Scientists want to exhume the body of Galileo to determine whether or not an eye problem caused some of his findings to be inaccurate. It is thought that Galileo suffered a bout of childhood illness which caused him to have eye problems later in life. This means that a lot of his work could be deemed inaccurate. Pathologists hope that if they are able to exhume his body, they may be able to use DNA tests to find out which condition he was suffering from and therefore simulate the things he was seeing through his telescope. They think that this condition is the reason he was seeing Saturn as an oblong shape, because his poor sight prevented his from seeing Saturn and her rings as separate.