Breast Pathology Fellowship

Aims Statement

Our Breast Pathology Program provides a comprehensive 1-year program to educate fellows to become excellent practitioners of all areas of breast pathology. We aim to produce excellent, highly competent breast pathologists with excellent clinical and research skills, who will be local and national leaders in the field of breast pathology. We also aim to provide ample research opportunities and exposure to a variety of settings. We also train our fellow to be able to practice breast pathology in a diverse patient population in a community or private practice setting.

Overview

Our ACGME-accredited Selective Pathology-Breast fellow is supervised by a team of five highly experienced breast pathologists with 10 to 20 years of experience in the field. This Breast Pathology subspecialty service covers two major hospitals, William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital (CUH) and Parkland Hospital (PHHS), which is a safety-net hospital that serves a different patient population. These two hospital systems provide a wealth of very interesting and challenging cases that cover the entire spectrum of breast diseases with a balanced distribution of benign and malignant diseases.

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Program Description

The fellow will have separate rotations in breast core biopsies and excision specimens with equal distribution between biopsies, outside consultation cases and excision specimens. The fellow will be proficient in the interpretation of breast core biopsies and excision specimens and correlate pathology findings with clinical and radiologic findings. Responsibilities also include direct participation in grossing of big breast specimens and supervising residents on their first time rotation in the breast subspecialty. Intraoperative consultations include general and breast subspecialty frozen section coverages. The fellow is expected to have a basic understanding of the different surgical techniques and how they apply to the handling and processing of breast specimens, including post neoadjuvant therapy cases. The fellow will review all slides, formulate diagnoses and dictate reports prior to sign-out with the faculty. Fellow will also evaluate breast biomarkers by IHC; and understand the CAP/ASCO guidelines for testing and interpretation of biomarkers. An important facet of the fellowship is to understand the importance and significance of the different molecular tests as they apply to the management of breast cancer.

Clinical rotation: Since the management of breast disease requires a multidisciplinary approach, the fellow has the option of doing an elective clinical rotation (radiology) during the fellowship year.

Multidisciplinary Conferences: The fellow participates in the weekly breast multidisciplinary conferences and presents cases to the multidisciplinary audience. This conference discusses clinical management issues, challenging cases, pathology-related issues and unique/interesting findings. The fellow also participates in the radiology-pathology conferences held once a month with the radiology fellows to discuss interesting cases and correlate radiology and pathology findings.

The fellow also actively participates in the breast subspecialty consensus conference held once a week to discuss challenging cases. Literature review/Journal club is held once a month and is presented by the fellow.

Teaching Responsibilities: The fellow is involved in teaching and mentoring pathology residents during their breast pathology rotation. The fellow also takes part in laboratory orientation and reviewing cases with the breast surgical oncology and radiology fellows during their pathology rotations. The fellow participates in laboratory quality control and assurance program, and understands the basics of laboratory management.

Research

Requirements

Benefits

Faculty