From the President’s Desk
June 2024—All of us in the pathology community, no matter how winding our career paths may have been, at some point made the same choice. Of all the medical specialties available to us, we were drawn to become pathologists.
Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now
Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the challenges of detecting NRG1 fusions and how RNA-based testing can support more comprehensive fusion identification in clinical practice.
Webinar presenter Benjamin Weinberg, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Attending Physician
specializing in gastrointestinal medical oncology
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. The webinar is made possible by a special educational grant from Diaceutics.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Join us for a session to help improve diagnostic accuracy in your practice when scoring HER2 IHC 0 with faint, incomplete membrane staining in ≤10% of tumor cells vs IHC 0 with no membrane staining detected in patients with mBC.
Webinar presenter Jeffrey Gregg, MD, University of Nevada
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is being sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Monday, November 16, 2026, 12:30 PM-2 PM ET
Hear experts discuss a multidisciplinary approach to oncopathology for HER2
assessments for solid tumors in the absence of a companion diagnostic.
Webinar presenters Funda Meric-Bernstam, MD, Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics Medical Director, Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, and Emina E. Torlakovic, MD, PhD, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Biomarker Quality Assurance, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Carol Cheung, MD, PhD, JD, FRCPC, Deputy Director, Canadian Biomarker Quality, Assurance—Programme canadien d’assurance de la qualité des biomarqueurs
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is being sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 12 PM-1 PM ET
Hear an expert pathologist discuss the role of HER2 IHC testing and scoring in solid tumors including endometrial, ovarian, cervical, bladder, non-small cell lung, colorectal, and biliary cancers
Webinar presenter Michelle Shiller, DO, MSPT, Baylor Sammons Cancer Center; Fulgent Genetics; Texas Cancer Interception Institute
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is intended for US healthcare professionals. This program is being sponsored by AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Subspecialties
Interactive Product Guides
Columns
Clinical pathology selected abstracts
June 2024—In today’s health care environment, clinical laboratories increasingly must focus on test optimization, or generating quality patient care in a timely manner while controlling costs. A metric that can assist with test optimization is turnaround time (TAT), the reduction of which can lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment. Conducting assays in house is one way to potentially reduce TAT. Laboratories often use test volume and the cost of reagents, equipment, and personnel to determine the benefit of bringing an assay in house. However, it is important not to overlook the impact and costs that extend beyond the laboratory with regard to patient care and potential savings from improved care.
Anatomic pathology selected abstracts
June 2024—Neuroendocrine neoplasms can arise in a variety of anatomic sites, including the gastrointestinal tract, pancreas, and lung. The authors conducted a study in which they examined the diagnostic utility of S100 protein expression by IHC. They reported on the expression of S100 protein in a tissue microarray composed of 919 primary and metastatic neuroendocrine neoplasms from 548 patients. S100 protein is commonly used by laboratories to identify neural and melanocytic neoplasms. It is occasionally used in the workup of neuroendocrine neoplasms when the diagnosis of paraganglioma is being considered.
Molecular pathology selected abstracts
June 2024—Somatic mutations in SETBP1 occur in a variety of myeloid malignancies, including myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasms, typically as secondary events during oncogenesis. However, whether SETBP1 alterations can serve as an initiating event for myeloid neoplasia and what other factors may influence the phenotype of SETBP1-mutated myeloid neoplasms remains unclear. To determine if SETBP1 mutations can initiate leukemia in vivo, the authors generated a mouse model expressing mutated SETBP1 in hematopoietic tissue. They reported that SETBP1G870S-mutated mice developed a chronic myeloid disorder with massive hepatosplenomegaly, myelofibrosis, atypical megakaryocytes, and granulocytic hyperplasia without granulocytic or erythroid dysplasia. SETBP1G870S precursors showed significant alterations in the transcriptional programs of differentiating hematopoietic cells, promoting granulocytic/monocytic differentiation while suppressing erythroid differentiation.
Q&A column
June 2024
Q. What are the requirements for correcting an automated white blood cell (WBC) count for the presence of megakaryocytes? Is there a formula for correcting it for megakaryocytes, as there is for the presence of nucleated red blood cells (nRBCs)? Read answer.
Q. Are there guidelines on how often a patient should be monitored for a blood transfusion reaction? Should reactions be monitored as frequently as vital signs? Read answer.
Newsbytes
June 2024—Fairness, like so many principles, is subjective. Yet that is not deterring a growing number of medical informaticists and others interested in health care technology from advocating to incorporate fairness into machine learning algorithms to combat bias.
Put It on the Board
June 2024—The Food and Drug Administration in May approved the two HPV self-collection approaches from Roche and BD.
From the President’s Desk
May 2024—You may have read my column in the March issue about how the CAP is taking care of the next generation of pathologists by helping and engaging our new-in-practice colleagues. If you’re a more seasoned pathologist, you may be wondering: What about me?
Clinical pathology selected abstracts
May 2024—Massive hemorrhage is a major cause of death in children, and the mortality rate from life-threatening hemorrhage is estimated to be 20 to 51 percent. To counter this high mortality rate, clinicians have sought to standardize massive transfusion protocols and hemostatic resuscitation, ensuring that protocols support balanced blood-based resuscitation or the use of low titer group O whole blood, or both. These protocols may include using the lysine analogue antifibrinolytics tranexamic acid (TXA) and epsilon aminocaproic acid (EACA) in children with life-threatening hemorrhage (LTH). However, use of these antifibrinolytics is much more common in adult trauma patients. Study data suggest that TXA may increase survival outcomes in adults with traumatic injury, postpartum hemorrhage, nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage, and all-cause bleeding.
Anatomic pathology selected abstracts
May 2024—The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology described four subclasses of atypia within the atypia of undetermined significance category: nuclear (AUS-Nuc), architectural (AUS-A), oncocytic (AUS-Onc), and atypia not otherwise specified (AUS-NOS). Accumulating evidence supports the use of a binary AUS subclassification scheme based primarily on the presence of nuclear atypia only. The authors conducted a study to compare the risk stratification of binary versus four-tier AUS subclassification systems among AUS nodules with molecular or histologic follow-up, or both. The study included thyroid aspirates classified as AUS and tested using Afirma (Veracyte Inc.) between June 2013 and July 2021. Histological classification was considered the final outcome for resected nodules.