Mission Statement
The Thoracic Pathology fellowship at UPMC Presbyterian is a one to two year fellowship oriented towards training residents or surgical pathology fellows in thoracic pathology. The fellowship is under review for approval by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education with anticipated approval in April, 2005. The program stresses both inflammatory and neoplastic thoracic pathology, with an emphasis on the utilization of state of the art immunohistochemical, fluorescence in situ hybridization, and molecular techniques in both analysis of clinical material and in translational research.
The fellowship is based at UPMC Presbyterian although it receives material from thoracic resections at both UPMC Presbyterian and UPMC Shadyside. The goal of the fellowship is to educate thoracic fellows in three major areas of thoracic pathology: inflammatory lung disease including lung transplantation, neoplastic pulmonary pathology, and the pathology of the mediastinum. The program trains academically-oriented fellows via one on one interactions with dedicated thoracic pathologists with an ability for the thoracic fellow to obtain independent signout experience towards the end of the fellowship year and the potential for an instructorship or assistant professorship at the University of Pittsburgh. The fellowship emphasizes the intimate relationship between pulmonologists, thoracic radiologists, pathologists and thoracic surgeons in the evaluation of pulmonary and mediastinal disease. These interactions take place within a variety of clinicopathologic conferences in addition to intrasectional meetings.
Fellows are expected to undertake at least one investigational project and are strongly encouraged to present at national meetings. The nature of these projects will depend on the fellow’s interest but can take advantage of the special interests of members of the faculty in thoracic pathology, which include fluorescence in situ hybridization, array based comparative genomic hybridization, loss of heterozygosity analysis and thoracic cytopathology.
