Mission Statement:
The bone and soft tissue pathology fellowship is based at UPMC-Shadyside, and receives over 5000 specimen and consultations from all UPMC hospitals. The fellowship program offers a broad-based experience in benign, and malignant soft tissue and bone lesions, and stresses the importance of ancillary techniques such as immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, molecular and cytogenetic investigations, often required for diagnosis of these lesions. The bone and soft tissue section is very well supported in these areas and has three pathologists deeply interested in this subspeciality.
The fellowship is a nine month rotation devoted to this subspeciality and a three month elective rotation in related molecular diagnostics, routine and molecular cytogenetics, informatics and quality assurance. The precise duration of each of the elective rotations is flexible. The fellow will be involved in a daily case sign out and intra operative consultations with the bone/soft tissue pathologist. The fellow is also expected to participate in the teaching of medical students and pathology residents. The fellowship program also emphasizes the importance of a multidisciplinary approach required for the diagnosis of these tumors, and the fellow is expected to actively participate in orthopaedic oncology teaching conferences. The fellow will also interact with surgical and medical oncologists, and the department of radiology based at UPMC Shadyside and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
The bone and soft tissue pathology fellows will take advantage of the department's informatics resources including image archiving, electronic medical record and the World Wide Web.Fellows are expected to undertake at least one investigational project and are strongly encouraged to publish and present at national meetings . The nature of the project will depend on the fellow's interest and the amount of time they wish to devote to it.
The fellowship program has been approved by the ACGME
