[Clinical pathology]

This work describes the basic elements of pathology used in clinical practice. Pathology plays an important role in clinical and scientific work, but only a few areas of pathology will be covered. Although the contribution of oncological and surgical pathology to therapy is the most well known, the cases chosen here will involve infectious pathology, diseases of the kidney and the liver, autoimmune diseases, as well as organ transplantation. Especially important is the description of methods that enable more accurate morphological diagnoses, such as histochemistry, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and electronic microscopy. Previous experience and joint work with clinical doctors have enabled the definition of significant morphological elements as well as of essential methods of pathohistological diagnosis. Besides, as is often the case, although disease symptoms are difficult to discern and biochemical results do not show significant changes compared to normal values, the results of biopsy come as a surprise to clinical doctors. For example, in virus hepatitis B involving so-called asymptomatic HBsAg carriers, we discovered every morphological form of hepatitis, from minimal lesions to chronic, persistent, and active hepatitis. With hepatitis C, certain morphological lesions point to the etiopathogenesis of this disease and thus help to confirm the diagnosis and to instigate therapy on time. Another significant experience involves kidney biopsies in cases when clinical findings are asymptomatic. Often, in such cases, morphological findings point to glomerulonephritis and glomerulopathy at different stages. Timely and subtle morphological diagnostics offer a more precise explanation for the pathological injury of tissues than other diagnostic methods. In this way, by adopting new methods, the work of pathologists is included more and more in everyday clinical practice. The inclusion of pathologists in a transplantation team makes sure a proper selection of the organ for transplantation is carried out and ensures a reliable evaluation of the condition of the transplanted organ, enabling appropriate therapy. Autoimmune, hereditary diseases are almost impossible to recognise unless a biopsy is performed as in the examples given. In this work, the 30-year-long results of the cooperation between clinical doctors and pathologists are presented and compared with similar results from modern literature, together with numerous examples that represent significant experiences and achievements of our medicine.