Tag Archives: CAP17 meeting

June 2018—With core needle biopsies of the breast, if something looks like an epithelial malignancy, ask yourself: Is it really a carcinoma? If it is a carcinoma, ask yourself if it is a primary breast carcinoma.

April 2018—DCIS or LCIS? Making the distinction can be difficult in some cases. Stuart J. Schnitt, MD, in a session at CAP17 on ancillary testing in breast pathology, delineated the reasons and provided tips, including the role of E-cadherin immunostains to help in this distinction. The cells of DCIS typically show strong membrane staining for E-cadherin while the cells of LCIS are typically E-cadherin negative. But among the tips: If an in situ lesion is E-cadherin positive, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s ductal carcinoma in situ. As he demonstrated in several cases, the lesion could be lobular carcinoma in situ with aberrant E-cadherin immunostaining.

February 2018—A case of ALK-rearranged lung cancer was the subject of a multidisciplinary molecular tumor board presented last fall at CAP17 by pathologist Laura J. Tafe, MD, and oncologist Benjamin Levy, MD. Together they offered up insights into the tumor genomics of lung cancer with talk of testing guidelines, targeted therapies, resistance mechanisms, and circulating tumor DNA analysis.

December 2017—Having validation data to support the use of age-adjusted D-dimer cutoffs with the D-dimer assay your laboratory uses is a must, and know well the limitations of point-of-care prothrombin time/INR testing. That advice and more was shared in a “Hot Topics in Hemostasis” session at CAP17, presented by Russell Higgins, MD, and Karen Moser, MD.

September 2017—The CAP is set to launch next month the Pathologists Quality Registry for pathologists to begin using in 2018 to collect data under Medicare’s Quality Payment Program (QPP) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) track.