[502] Partners in Pathology: A Model for Department-Wide Educational Experience

W Foo, JW Carlson, E Lyon, D Walton, P Farmer, V Nose. Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA

Background: Disease variety in large, tertiary care hospitals is often dictated by the demographics in which these hospitals operate. In order to broaden the overall educational experience in these settings, drawing upon clinicians in other settings must be pursued. Partners in Health is a comprehensive, community-based healthcare organization with clinics in seven countries. Although the disease burden in these settings is primarily infectious, the variety amongst benign and malignant neoplasms is diverse. The collaborative effort between our Department and Partners in Health serves an important role in alleviating health disparities for underserved patients and provides an overlooked opportunity to diversify and broaden educational experiences.
Design: To establish collaboration with clinicians working on-site, to demonstrate the ease of providing pathology services in resource poor settings, and to evaluate the exposure of our staff to different pathology.
Results: Sixty-four consecutive cases from Haiti, Rwanda, and Lesotho from patients with a median age of 27 (range 1-81) were examined. Diagnoses included twenty-five malignancies, eight infectious or inflammatory cases, and other rare entities. The malignancies included two uncommon cases of Kaposi sarcoma with lymphangiomatoid features, a case of malignant teratoid medulloepithelioma, and a case of extranodal sinusoidal histiocytosis. In addition, multiple EBV-associated neoplasms were demonstrated. Among the infectious cases were two cases of tuberculosis, a case of chromoblastomycosis, a case of actinomyces, and several cases with necrotizing granulomas where no organisms were identified. These cases were frequently presented at various department-wide conferences.
Conclusions: The diversity in non-infectious and infectious diseases represented an invaluable educational experience for our Department. In this cohort, many of the malignancies have been rarely reported in literature. These unusual cases served to educate both our trainees and our senior staff. The collaboration between an academic pathology department and clinicians operating in these resource poor settings was simple and brought with it a host of benefits to both parties.
Category: Education

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:00 PM

Poster Session VI # 75, Wednesday Afternoon