Using microscopes for long periods of time is both fun and laborious. Here are some tips for reducing eye, neck, and back pain when at the scope, as well as ergonomic features you may want to look for in a microscope.

Nipple-sparing mastectomies are preferred for patients with breast cancer that do not involve the nipple-areolar complex. In practice, subareolar tissue is submitted for intraoperative frozen sections, and the pathologist examines the specimen for microscopic signs of malignancy. This paper examines the reliability of this method in detecting occult nipple disease and the tumor features that predict a positive biopsy.

Imprint cytology is a valuable tool in evaluating specimens received for lymphoma workup. Whether the specimen is abundant or scant, imprint cytology helps in triaging tissue allocation for subsequent studies.

While my background in molecular biology and medicine provides me with the appreciation of the beauty in synthesis—how the threads of life weave together—there is much that I have to learn in pathology. Trying to learn as much as I can, from molecular patterns to cellular morphology to tissue architecture, even while keeping the patient and clinical scenario in mind, will undoubtedly be challenging.