Wow, it feels like a really long time since I made a blog post.
Over the past 2 weeks or so since getting back from Japan, I've been busy moving. After I moved into my new place I read the 4th edition of Orthopedic Pathology by Peter Bullough (Hosp. for Spec. Surgery in NY). A 5th ed is available, but I'm reading the late edition (since it's the only physical copy the library has). The reason I wanted to read this is because of the few times I came across bone (not in the context of bone marrow biopsy for hemepath), I felt like I had very little idea/knowledge regarding what I was looking at.
It's a really good book and I recommend it. It goes into gory detail about all things bone. Something which surprised me about this book, is it mentioned having radiologist input, which I thought would last for a few chapters or so then peter out, but it has consistent rad-path correlates pretty much the whole way through the book which I think is quite commendable. It also has really good examples of disease entities which are rare. It always amazes me how the specimens are presented in this book... very clearly, which I assume must have taken hours of careful dissection to prepare. Something which I keep wondering while reading this book, is what their gross room setup looks like. I assume it is something similar to a carpenter's shop with huge razors and the like for sawing through bones. It shows some of their gross room in the introductory section, but it would be very cool to get a tour someday.
The book would be a good read for future radiologists as well, as it goes through differential diagnoses and mimickers.
Reading this book also made me realize how much special equipment is necessary to conduct a comprehensive assessment of bone... half of the pictures in here have polarized light microscopy and a lot of special stains are used, in addition to red filter for gout and CPPD.
An interesting point that I think I got from this book is that bone pathology is very easily confused on imaging. For example, some of the benign entities discussed were removed because they were mistaken for malignant processes. This happens in other areas of pathology as well, but I suppose in bone it is more high-stakes. In other instances, a malignant lesion can be confused for a benign process... This is one area in which I wonder if molecular genetics could be very helpful in pinning down a diagnosis.
What resources do you recommend for learning bone pathology?
