[General principles of handling tissues and organs intended for examination in histopathology - pathologists...

Histopathology has continued to develop into a complex discipline of laboratory medicine in the last 30 years. Implementation of new techniques such as immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, molecular pathology and gene profiling yields a large amount of information which is used not only to establish diagnosis, but also for prediction and prognosis. The basic conditions for precision and correctness of this information which directly influence the choice of therapy and the outcome for the patient, and eventually the health and the life of the patient, are obtaining a suitable specimen and the best laboratory processing. The first step in this procedure is collection of samples, fixation and submission to the pathology laboratory - the pre-analytical phase. Knowledge of the principles of this phase and their implementation in daily practice in surgery is of main importance for the quality and quantity of information obtained. We introduce the basic rules for proper handling of different specimens depending on the use of conventional and "new" histopathology methods.