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

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Dr. Cagle

The session will address topics such as new lung cancer biomarkers being requested by oncologists; preanalytic and postanalytic expectations regarding biomarker testing; the oncologist’s perspective regarding which patients to treat; emerging problems with EGFR TKI resistance and ALK resistance to crizotinib; the new status of immunohistochemistry screening for ALK fusion genes; and next-generation sequencing panels.

“All of these things are part of the changing practice of pathology,” Dr. Cagle notes. “Putting them into context with patient care is vital to the way pathology is currently practiced, because today patients with cancer are reviewed by multidisciplinary tumor boards, and pathologists are part of this team. Therefore, understanding the why of what pathologists are asked to do helps pathologists understand what they need to do.”

Among other sessions expected to draw particular attention are “Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: What Every Practicing Pathologist Needs to Know,” presented by Patrick A. Treseler, MD, PhD; a slide seminar titled “Problem Cases in Surgical Pathology,” led by Saul Suster, MD, and others; a video microscopic tutorial on acute leukemia, led by Daniel A. Arber, MD; “Cancer Is Not Always the Most Important Answer in Nephrectomies: No Kidney,” by Anthony Chang, MD, and Gladell P. Paner, MD; and “The Great Mimickers in Hematopathology: Malignancies that Appear Benign and Benign Lesions that Appear Malignant,” presented by Parul Bhargava, MD, and Sherrie L. Perkins, MD, PhD.

Of the latter, Dr. Wilson says, “That will be of interest both to the anatomic pathologists and the hematopathologists—diagnostic pitfalls in lymphoid malignancies.”

She also urges attendees to take advantage of the offerings that will specifically address next-generation sequencing, such as the roundtable discussion titled “I Need Help! Selecting a Laboratory for Next-Generation Sequencing Send-Outs,” which will be guided by John D. Pfeifer, MD, PhD, and Jill H. Kaufman, PhD. “That’s one of the key things coming up in molecular oncology, and even if you’re not doing it, you should know where to send it out and what you should be looking for,” Dr. Wilson says.

A special evening plenary to be given by gynecological pathology expert Richard Zaino, MD, of Penn State M.S. Hershey Medical Center, should attract great interest, Dr. Cagle says. “He’s a very prominent gynecological pathologist, but he won’t be talking about his subspecialty,” he says. “His title is ‘In the Trenches During the War on Cancer,’ and he’s going to talk about his experiences with cancer over the last 25 years and where we’re going to go from here.”

To any colleagues left wondering why or whether they should attend CAP ’15, Dr. Wilson says: “I would highlight how rapidly the field of pathology is evolving and how we’re having to change our testing and be the educational and interpretive link to our clinical partners. It’s very hard, nowadays, to know what’s most important with all the knowledge being sent to us. That’s the nice thing with this meeting—experts have done that screening for us and are telling us what’s important.”
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Anne Ford is a writer in Evanston, Ill. For more information about CAP ’15 or to register, go to www.cap.org/cap15.