Lifting agent granuloma presenting as a colonic mass mimicking cancer: a report of three cases.

Background: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved submucosal injection of lifting agents such as ORISE has become a widespread, routine and standard practice in endoscopic mucosal resection and endoscopic submucosal dissection of gastrointestinal lesions. Lifting agent granulomas result from transformation of injected material into a mass-forming amorphous hyaline-like material eliciting a strong foreign body giant cell reaction. This report of three cases shows how lifting agent granulomas can act as potential clinical and gross mimickers of invasive adenocarcinoma.

Anatomy of a Cyberattack: Part 4: Quality Assurance and Error Reduction, Billing and Compliance, Transition to Uptime.

Objectives: Our institution was the victim of a cyberattack that necessitated use of manual laboratory systems for more than 25 days. These manual processes had to be created not only to enable us to process our case volume without bottlenecks but also to maintain patient safety and allow for billing.

Methods: Our laboratory needed to create a safe reporting process to ensure ongoing patient safety and error reduction during the downtime.

Gynecologic melanomas: A clinicopathologic and molecular analysis.

Objective: Melanoma originating from gynecologic sites (MOGS), including the vulva, vagina, and cervix, is a rare and aggressive form of melanoma with poor long-term clinical outcome. The clinicopathologic features of vulvar and non-vulvar tumors remain relatively understudied, and in contrast to cutaneous melanomas at non-sun-exposed sites, MOGS typically do not harbor BRAF mutations. Thus, we sought to analyze the clinicopathologic and molecular features of MOGS.

The effectiveness of acetic acid wash protocol and the interpretation patterns of blood contaminated cervical cytology ThinPrep(®) specimens.

Background: ThinPrep(®) (TP) cervical cytology, as a liquid-based method, has many benefits but also a relatively high unsatisfactory rate due to debris/lubricant contamination and the presence of blood. These contaminants clog the TP filter and prevent the deposition of adequate diagnostic cells on the slide. An acetic acid wash (AAW) protocol is often used to lyse red blood cells, before preparing the TP slides.

Core Needle Biopsy Wash Optimization: Enabling Specimen Integrity for both Cytological and Histological Evaluation.

Background: The recovery of cells after washing core needle biopsies represents an under-utilized approach to extend the diagnostic capacity of these diminutive specimens. Recovery of these cells can be dedicated for molecular studies so that the biopsy itself can be used apropos for its intended purpose, diagnosis. Non-enzymatic and enzymatic reagents have the potential to increase the number of cells dissociating from the tissue core, but can also negatively impact the quality of the tissue itself.

Authors attain comparable or slightly higher rates of citation publishing in an open access journal (CytoJournal) compared to traditional cytopathology journals - A five year (2007-2011) experience.

Background: The era of Open Access (OA) publication, a platform which serves to better disseminate scientific knowledge, is upon us, as more OA journals are in existence than ever before. The idea that peer-reviewed OA publication leads to higher rates of citation has been put forth and shown to be true in several publications. This is a significant benefit to authors and is in addition to another relatively less obvious but highly critical component of the OA charter, i.