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At CAP ’15, 98 courses and a focus on daily practice

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Anne Ford

May 2015—With several dozen pathology associations worldwide, many with their own meetings, why should a pathologist opt to attend CAP ’15 in Nashville, Tenn., Oct. 4–7? Philip Cagle, MD, supplies some thoughts.

“There are many pathology organizations, and each has its own niche. Whereas at the CAP meeting, there are many courses covering a broad range of areas, from things such as practice management and quality assurance to different areas of anatomic pathology and clinical pathology,” says Dr. Cagle, who is medical director of pulmonary pathology in the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

For a second opinion, there’s Carla Wilson, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Pathology and director of the flow cytometry laboratory at the University of New Mexico. “This is the one meeting that I think is more about daily pathology practice and lab management,” says Dr. Wilson, who, as a member of the College’s Curriculum Committee, is helping to organize CAP ’15. “There’s more to learn about practices in pathology and laboratory medicine that you will not hear at many of your other, more academic meetings. I think this is a good meeting for pathologists out in the community to come back and really get a good educational update.”

And then there’s the view of Curriculum Committee chair Terence J. Colgan, MD, head of gynecological pathology and cytopathology at Mount Sinai Hospital and professor in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Toronto.

“At the CAP meeting, we really do stress networking and the ability to learn from your colleagues in an informal way,” Dr. Colgan says. “Last year saw the largest attendance ever, about 1,400. But it’s still a size where, if somebody else is at the meeting, you’re fairly reliably going to see them sooner or later. And there’s enough time during breaks for people to network.”

Dr. Colgan

Dr. Colgan

If, somehow, none of those reasons appeals, there are still more draws—almost 100 of them. “We are going to have 98 courses, including two plenary sessions, and nearly half of the courses are brand-new,” Dr. Colgan points out.

Thanks to attendee feedback from previous years, CAP ’15 courses will offer more self-assessment modules than were available at earlier meetings. “We’ve been significantly increasing the number of SAMs,” Dr. Wilson says. “Thirty-three courses in 2015 will have SAMs, including seven of the new courses, so this will be very good for the younger members who need these for licensures.”
One new course is “Emerging Issues in Lung Cancer Predictive Biomarkers,” co-led by Dr. Cagle and Eric H. Bernicker, MD.

“There have been many advances in lung cancer predictive biomarkers, and those advances are hand-in-hand with the development of targeted therapy drugs that have improved survival in many patients,” Dr. Cagle says. “I’m teaching this course with Dr. Bernicker, the medical thoracic oncologist at Houston Methodist. He and I work together daily taking care of lung cancer patients, so this is based on real-world interactions.”

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