Pathology is a discipline of medical science studying the material basis of diseases. Therefore, a knowledge and understanding of pathology is a necessary step in training doctors of any specialty. A doctor must understand which morphological changes cause the specific manifestations of disease, and only knowing this provides the physician an opportunity to correctly diagnose the disease, predict its course and treat it. Knowledge of the morphology of pathological processes and understanding their relation to changes in the diseased body’s functions contribute to the formation of a doctor’s clinical thinking, which is one of the main tasks of higher medical education. Therefore, the formation of clinical thinking, crucial for any clinician, specifically begins with the study of pathology.
Worldwide scientific advancements in recent decades have been characterized by a rapid development in medicine including new technical opportunities, novel information technologies, which not only make it possible to obtain up-to-date knowledge, share information, and use it in practice, but also to systematize this knowledge in textbooks and guides reflecting the modern level of medical science and expertise. Thanks to this, students can access the latest scientific and practical achievements including those in genetics and molecular pathology.
The textbook is written by a group of the most experienced teaching pathologists from the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Sechenov University) with the participation of leading specialists from an array of other medical institutions. Nevertheless, the presentation of the issues of general and specialty pathology is based on the principle of structural and functional unity. Therefore, the authors tried not only to demonstrate the morphological basis of pathological processes and diseases, but also their association with the changes in bodily functions manifesting as certain symptoms of diseases, to represent their dynamic development, i.e. their pathogenesis. This establishes a basis for further study of all clinical specialties.
Pathological anatomy is a clinical specialty and pathologists are part of a hospital. Pathologists not only participate in lifetime and post-mortem diagnostics of various diseases, they also control the medical and diagnostic activity of clinicians of all other specialties, revealing errors made by them during clinical treatment and the reasons thereof, thus increasing the expertise of the hospital’s medical personnel. Therefore, pathology is a most important step in a doctor’s training, and the “Pathology” textbook is up to this task.
The authors and the editor will be grateful for all comments and suggestions aimed at improving the “Pathology” textbook. Please address your letters to Professor Vyacheslav Semenovich Paukov (paukov@mma.ru).