Founded in 1950, the department of pathology of Renji Hospital is one of the earliest hospitals in Shanghai to carry out clinicopathological diagnosis. Under the leadership and support of the hospital leaders and through the efforts of several generations, the team of our department has developmented into a professional team composed of 26 diagnosologists and 26 technicians by 2024, with a total work area of about 2000 square metes in the east, west and south distincts and a network pathology cooperation platform with branches in Ningbo Hangzhou Bay, Wuxi and other regions, covering the four diagnostic contents of histopathology, immunopathology, molecular pathology and cytopathology.
【 Staff composition 】
All the diagnostic physicians in the department have master's degree or above, and seven of them have doctor's degree. In the diagnostic team, there are seven senior medical titles: the current director Professor Cao Dengfeng, deputy director Professor Liu Zebing, He Yamin, and former director Professor Liu Qiang; one master supervisor; and thirteen attending physicians. In 2024, there will be thirteen clinical pathologists preparing to graduate, including five special physicians, five resident physicians receiving standardized training and three postgraduates. In the technical group, there are two technologists-in-charge: Chen Yiming and Xuan Beilei.
【 Routine work 】
The Department has over 100,000 surgical specimens (excluding digestive endoscopic small specimens), 10,000 intraoperative frozen sections, and 3,000 consultation cases annually. The immunohistochemical lab equipped DAKO, Leica, Roche and other detection platforms carries out 28,000 cases, fully covered clinical needs. The annual cytopathologic diagnosis is 120,000 cases, including gynecological TCT and urine or other non-gynecological TCT detection items. Relying on the substantially various clinical disciplines of Renji Hospital, the pathologists in the department have rich experience in the diagnosis of tumor and non-tumor lesions in various organs, especially liver, biliary and pancreatic, urinary male reproductive system, female reproductive system, gastrointestinal, breast, thoracic, head and neck, soft tissue and lymphopoietic system, and transplantation pathology (liver transplantation, etc.). With participatting in the diagnosis and treatment of patients in dozens of clinical and pathological multidisciplinary collaboration platforms (MDT), based on their own pathological work, closely linked with clinical practice, the pathologists play inmportant role in the clinical treatment.
【 Molecular Pathology 】
In terms of molecular pathology, there are 2 clinical PCR laboratories for “ basic setting standards for clinical gene amplification testing laboratory” approved by Shanghai Clinical Testing Center, strictly implying clinical gene amplification laboratory work and management norms, and has carried out a number of projects related to pathological diagnosis and targeted therapy to achieve full coverage of clinical needs. The complete configuration of PCR, Sanger-seq, NGS and other platforms can carry out the combined detection of single gene and multi-gene variation in tissues or liquid biopsy specimens such as lung cancer, bowel cancer, lymphoma/leukemia. Especially, the NGS clinical laboratory for cancer, which was built and installed in 2021, is equipped with three sequencers, illumina MiSeq DX, NextSeq 550DX, Thermo S5DX, and two Agilent automatic database building devicesIt which can meet all tumor-related clinical detection needs based on tissue samples and liquid biopsy samples. The project has been widely recognized by various clinical departments since it was carried out in our hospital.
【 Teaching and Research work 】
In 2010, the department of pathology became one of the first training bases for resident doctors in Shanghai, and in 2014, it became one of the first training bases for clinicopathology (with the sub-specialty of urology and male reproduction) in Shanghai. The department undertakes the clinicopathology teaching for students from different sources, including doctors in rotation in various bases, interns in various departments and postgraduates in the undergraduate department, including one graduate student, two-three doctors in the base, and dozens of doctors in rotation each year. The doctors in the base implement the teaching system, and the senior doctors are appointed to teach one by one. The teachers are expert and professional. The department has advanced equipment and various new pathological technologies, which has set up a good platform of medical, teaching and research for the training of resident doctors. The department has established feedback and communication channels for residents, as well as evaluation system, so as to encourage residents to complete their studies better. In addition, the department has one tutor for a master's degree in clinical pathology from the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and two graduate students are currently studying.
In recent years, the department has obtained two National Natural Science Foundation, two Nature Foundation of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, and one project of "Double hundred people" for research doctors of Shanghai Jiaotong University Medical School, and has published many high-level SCI papers such as Mol Cancer, J Clin Pathol, Cancer, the Chinese Journal of Pathology, Chinese Journal of transplantation and other famous domestic journals. Over the years, they have been invited to participate in important academic conferences at home and abroad such as the annual meeting of USCAP and the Annual meeting of Pathology of Chinese Medical Association.