Klin Onkol 2003; 16(Suppl 2003): 103-106.
Summary: Pathology diagnostics of tumors in childhood requires a long term experience. Since 1974 we started the Morphological Registry of Tumors in Childhood. By the end of 2002 there are 3 864 children and adolescents up to 18 years of age with malignant tumors, 417 patients with tumors of uncertain biological properties and 3 242 children with benign tumors and diseases mimicking neoplasms. The registry serves as a source of education in the problematic, and as a source of information and preserved tissues for a continuous research. Histopathological diagnosis is a basis for the diagnostic process and classification of tumors in children. In recent years a support of protein identification with the use of immunohistochemistry is necessary; diagnostics at the ultrastructural level is also useful; hybridization techniques and developing methods demonstrating molecular changes at the level of nucleic acids are becoming more important. To achieve a complex laboratory approach to the diagnosis a close collaboration with departments of surgery becomes inevitable – the biologic material should be submitted fresh and sterile to the hands of a pathologist. The pathologist establishes the diagnosis and participates at the sampling of a representative tumor tissue for other specialized investigations – cytogenetics, flow cytometry and molecular diagnostics (DNA and RNA analysis). Working in a team we achieve a precise histopathologic diagnosis and due to an interdisciplinary approach we may better characterize the nature of the tumors.
