Department of Pathology

Head of Department: Martin Syrůček, MD

Activities of the Department

The Department carries out all bioptic and cytological diagnoses within the Na Homolce Hospital and, in cooperation with other laboratories providing complementary services, provides a part of bioptic and cytological diagnoses to selected private and state health care facilities in Prague. Recently, consultations (second reading) of diagnostically difficult neuropathological biopsies for departments of pathology in the entire country have been provided. In addition, the Department is in charge of necroptic activity (autopsies), including organizational services when delivering bodies to the funeral service. The Department organizes clinical pathology workshops with analysis of selected autopsies and biopsies for individual clinical departments in order to increase the quality of the medical care provided.

Organizational units of the Department

The Department performs its activities as a whole and is not comprised of individual organizational units or cost centres. Only the newly reconstructed premises are divided into a histology and cytology laboratory and a special methods laboratory (immunohistochemistry).

Basic data

Staff:

  • 5 physicians working full-time and one physician working part-time (0.5 FTE based on a contract for work)
  • 8 lab technicians working full-time, one member of paramedical staff and one laboratory technician working part-time (0.5 FTE based on a contract for work)
  • 1 autopsy technician working full-time
  • 2 secretaries (assistants) working full-time and one retired person working part-time (0.5 FTE based on a contract for work)
  • 1 quality manager in charge of the requirements of the Department in connection with JCI accreditation processes and ISO 15189

Premises
Since 2009, the Department has had newly reconstructed premises at its disposal,
the arrangement and equipment of which comply with the standard ISO 15189. They include:

  • Administrative section with 5 offices for physicians, one office for the senior laboratory technician and quality manager, administrative offices, rooms for employees, changing rooms, storerooms for preparations and workshop rooms,
  • The autopsy unit with a dissection room, preparation rooms and cooling equipment with 20 boxes for the deceased (these premises are separated by a sanitary filter),
  • Laboratory premises (also separated by a sanitary filter) with 6 rooms – histology laboratory, cytology laboratory, special methods laboratory, laboratory for cutting materials fixed in formol-saline, laboratory for cutting materials using microtomes, and a cytology screener’s room.

Workshops
In 2015, the physicians of the Department attended 94 clinical pathological conferences, where 26 autopsy and 692 biopsy cases were discussed.

Since 2002 the Department has organized, in addition to clinical and pathological workshops, also regular weekly multidisciplinary mammology workshops with the attendance of a surgeon, radiologist and oncologist, focused on the analysis of biopsy examinations based on the clinical picture, together with analysis of therapeutic and prognostic outlooks. Workshops are also organized once a week or once in two weeks in cooperation with the ENT Department and clinical and pathological workshops with the Centre for Pulmonary Endoscopy, according to the need of clinicians. Regularly once a week, the staff participate in neuro-oncological workshops with the physicians of neurosciences, oncologists of the Teaching Hospital in Motol and radiologists, to discuss all biopsy cases from the preceding period. Since the second half of 2017, our physicians participate in surgical-oncological workshops once a week. Workshops with other specializations are organized as needed, as a rule twice a year, clinical pathological workshops together with the Department of Cardiac Surgery are organized once a month. These workshops are part of the further training programme of clinical departments, aimed at increasing the quality required under the accreditation standards.

Significant changes and events

  • ČIA – ISO accreditation: The Department of Pathology obtained a repeated accreditation of the Czech Accreditation Institute (ČIA) – ISO 15189:2013 – in May 2015. A supervision procedure is successfully performed every year.
  • JCI accreditation: The Department of Pathology as part of the Na Homolce Hospital participated in successful JCI reaccreditation in May 2017.
  • External quality assessment: Since 2011, the pathology laboratory has participated in external quality assessment in cooperation with the contractual company SEKK spol. s.r.o. The Department of Pathology obtained the certificate. Further assessment is performed by means of sent consultations and interlaboratory comparisons.
  • As part of the Centre for neuro-oncological section of the Czech Society for Oncology of the Czech Medical Association of J. E. Purkyně, the Departmen performs biobanking of brain tumours for research purposes.
  • Since 2016, examinations of the sentinel lymph node in selected patients with breast cancer have been performed in cooperation with the Department of General Surgery, Department of Nuclear Medicine and PET Centre).
  • On March 27, 2017 the department obtained accreditation for the teaching programme of medical specialities in the field of pathology from the Czech Ministry of Health.

 

Development perspectives for 2018

  • We maintain and further improve the standard of diagnostics and clinical and pathological workshops.
  • The range of immunohistochemical antibodies has been extended according to the needs of individual hospital departments.
  • The Department will introduce immunohistochemical devices in order to improve and speed up diagnostics using immunohistochemical methods.
  • In cooperation with the molecular diagnostics laboratory of the Na Homolce Hospital, the classification of brain tumours according to the new histological and molecular WHO classification will be introduced.