Yan Peng - Practical Breast Pathology: Frequently Asked Questions

The proposed Book Series will be designed to provide a comprehensive, practical and state-of-the art review and update of the major issues and challenges specific to each subspecialty field of surgical pathology in a question and answer (Q&A) format. Making an accurate diagnosis especially from a limited sample can be quite challenging, yet crucial to patient care. The proposed Book Series, using the most current and evidence-based resources, will 1) focus on frequently asked questions in surgical pathology in day-to-day practice; 2) provide quick, accurate, terse, and useful answers to many practical questions encountered in daily practice; 3) emphasize the importance of a triple test (clinical, radiologic, and histologic correlation); 4) delineate how to appropriately utilize immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization and molecular tests; and 5) minimize any potential diagnostic pitfalls in surgical pathology. These books will also include highly practical presentations of typical case scenarios seen in an anatomic pathology laboratory. These will be in the form of case presentations with step-by-step expert analysis. Sample cases would include common but challenging situations, such as evaluation of well-differentiated malignant tumors vs. benign/reactive lesions; distinction of two benign entities; sub-classification of a malignant tumor; identification of newly described tumor and non-tumor entities; workup of a tumor of unknown origin; and implementation of best practice in immunohistochemistry and molecular testing in a difficult case. The Q&A format will be well accepted, especially by junior pathologists, for several reasons: 1) this is the most practical and effective way to deliver information to a new generation of pathologists accustomed to using the Internet as a resource and, therefore, comfortable and familiar with a Q&A learning environment; 2) its impossible to memorialize and digest massive amounts of new information about new entities, new and revised classifications, molecular pathology, diagnostic IHC, and the therapeutic implications of each entity by reading large textbooks; 3) sub-specialization is a very popular practice model highly demanded by many clinicians; and 4) time is very precious for a practicing pathologist because of increasing workloads in recent years following U.S. health care reforms. This Book Series will meet all of the above expectations. These books will be written by established and recognized experts in their specialty fields and will provide a unique and valuable resource in the field of surgical pathology, both for those currently in training and for those already in clinical practice at various skill levels. It does not seek to duplicate or completely replace other large standard textbooks; rather, it will be a new, comprehensive yet concise and practical resource on these timely and critical topics.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13808

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

With recent understanding of breast tumor biology and rapid advances in breast cancer treatment, timely updates on diagnostic surgical pathology of breast disease become keenly necessary and important. The purpose of this book is to provide a practical, evidence-based, up-to-date, problem-solving guide to frequently encountered diagnostic problems, challenges, and controversies in breast pathology and associated molecular pathology practice, with emphasis on addressing diagnostic issues that have significant impact on clinical management.

This textbook is based on a PubMed (US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland) literature review and the editors and chapter authors personal experiences. It consists of ten chapters with an abundance of color photomicrographs and images. The book is organized in a question-and-answer format accompanied by case presentations. We hope this format will facilitate finding answers to frequently asked questions in breast pathology. The book also discusses genetic alterations and molecular abnormalities in breast cancer and commonly encountered interpretation dilemmas regarding immunohistochemistry in breast cancer and metastatic cancer to the breast, with a focus on prognostic and predictive tumor biomarkers. In addition, the book covers some uncommon, diagnostically challenging breast lesions.

We hope that practicing pathologists and pathologists-in-training will find this book helpful for efficiently solving diagnostic problems in their daily practice in breast pathology.

We are grateful to all the contributing chapter authors for working with us on this book and for making this collaboration a memorable and rewarding experience.

We are honored to have been invited to contribute to this volume in the Practical Anatomic Pathology series, which is edited by Dr. Fan Lin and Dr. Ximing J. Yang and published by Springer.