Anatomical pathology is dead? Long live anatomical pathology.

The standard diagnostic instrument used for over 150 years by anatomical pathologists has been the optical microscope and glass slide. The advent of immunohistochemistry in the routine laboratory in the 1980s, followed by in situ hybridisation in the 1990s, has increased the armamentaria available to the diagnostic pathologist, and this technology has led to changed patient management in a limited number of neoplastic diseases. The first decade of the 21 century has seen an increasing number of publications using proteomic technologies that promise to change disease diagnosis and management, the traditional role of an anatomical pathologist. Despite the plethora of publications on proteomics and pathology, to date there are actually limited data where proteomic technologies do appear to be of greater diagnostic value than the standard histological slide. Though proteomic techniques will become more prevalent in the future, it will need the expertise of an anatomical pathologist to dissect out and validate this added information.