Subspecialties

March 2024—Like identifying the shift in battle that leads to victory, or the battle that wins the war—let alone declaring a war’s ultimate victor—it’s hard to gauge the whens, ifs, and hows that mark progress in medicine. For those who are deeply rooted in bringing advances to testing in urothelial cancers, current research is flourishing and flummoxing. In early and late stage, both for bladder and upper tract disease, recently approved therapies are leading to better outcomes for patients. More immunotherapies and antibody-drug conjugates are on their way, and with them come new options for testing. But as with any cancer, researchers follow numerous promising paths, knowing that some will dead-end and others will succeed primarily (albeit usefully) in raising more questions. Nevertheless, they continue to rally the work forward, with multiple breaches, and Agincourt, ever in sight. For experts such as David McConkey, PhD, progress will best be measured by how regularly precision makes its way into the clinical setting.

March 2024—Pathology trainees and training programs vary, as do first jobs, but the first year in pathology practice is generally said to be a tough one, largely because of the transition to fully independent case sign-out.