A bone marrow biopsy report can look intimidating the first time you read one. Terms such as hypercellular marrow, blasts, dysplasia, fibrosis, and myeloid-to-erythroid ratio may appear together, making the report feel almost like another language. But each finding answers a fairly straightforward question. Understanding bone marrow biopsy findings in blood disorders starts with knowing … Read more
Every second, your bloodstream carries an enormous population of cells doing very different jobs. Red blood cells deliver oxygen, white blood cells help defend against infection, and platelets help stop bleeding when a blood vessel is damaged. Surprisingly, these different blood components share a common origin. Understanding how blood cells develop from stem cells in … Read more
High blood pressure can be surprisingly easy to ignore. You may feel completely normal while every heartbeat is pushing blood against your artery walls with more force than they are designed to handle. That is one reason hypertension is often called a “silent” condition. According to the World Health Organization, around 1.4 billion adults aged … Read more
A heart attack may feel like a sudden event, but the biological story behind it often begins years earlier. Slow changes inside the coronary arteries can gradually reduce blood flow to the heart. Then, sometimes within minutes, a disrupted plaque and newly formed blood clot can transform a relatively stable condition into a medical emergency. … Read more
The first few weeks of studying pathology can feel like learning an entirely new language. Suddenly, lectures are filled with words such as etiology, pathogenesis, necrosis, hyperplasia, and neoplasia, and many of them sound frustratingly similar. The good news is that these terms become much easier once you understand the ideas behind them. Learning the … Read more
When someone develops a disease, the first questions are usually simple: What caused it? What is happening inside the body? And why does it produce certain symptoms? Pathology helps answer all three. Rather than looking only at how a patient feels, pathology studies the changes occurring in cells, tissues, organs, blood, and other body systems. … Read more
Two tumors can look almost identical under a microscope yet behave very differently. One may grow slowly, while another spreads rapidly. One might respond dramatically to a targeted drug, while the other ignores the same treatment. The explanation may be hidden inside their DNA and RNA. Molecular pathology studies genetic and molecular changes within diseased … Read more
A tiny group of cells can reveal a surprising amount about what is happening inside the body. Changes in nuclear size, cell shape, chromatin, or the way cells cluster together may provide important clues about inflammation, infection, precancerous change, or malignancy. This microscopic approach is called cytology, or cytopathology. Unlike traditional histology, which examines cells … Read more
Two patients can have cancers that arise in the same organ and look similar under a microscope, yet their tumors may behave very differently. One might respond extremely well to a particular targeted drug, while the other receives little benefit from the same treatment. The difference may lie in cancer biomarkers. A biomarker is a … Read more
Imagine two patients diagnosed with the same type of cancer. One has a small tumour whose cells look extremely abnormal under the microscope. The other has a larger tumour made of cells that still resemble the normal tissue they came from. Which cancer is more serious? The answer is not always obvious because cancer has … Read more