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Pathology Subspecialty Intranet Compendium: Abundant Neuropathology Resources Made Accessible to Meet Diverse Training and Diagnostic Needs
Philip J. Boyer, MD, PhD (philip.boyer@utsouthwestern.edu), Jack Raisanen, MD, Kimmo J. Hatanpaa, MD, PhD, Charles L. White, MD. Department of Pathology, Division of Neuropathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
Context: The subspecialty of neuropathology encompasses diseases of the central nervous system, pituitary, skeletal muscle, and autonomic and peripheral nervous systems, each with specific etiologic processes and data sets including classification schemes and diagnostic criteria. Given the breadth of the field, it is challenging to present a coherent "curriculum" replete with a study guide and references to meet the needs of medical students, residents, and fellows who rotate through the neuropathology service. Likewise, it is challenging to maintain ready access to relevant resources to meet the needs of daily sign-out. While text books cover most topics well, access to gold standard articles, diagrams, and tables is still important during training and during diagnostic sign out.
Technology: Resources are compiled on a departmental Web server and accessed after sign-in to the UT Southwestern Medical Center intranet. Access is through standard Web pages with information stored as HTML documents or downloadable as Adobe Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Word files.
Design: To comply with fair use restrictions, resources are accessible only by intranet to UTSW faculty, students, and staff. PDFs of key literature references in journals licensed by UTSW were obtained on-line, when available. Hard copies of older, classic references were scanned and converted to PDF files. Likewise, a wide variety of diagrams, tables, and charts obtained from various sources over the years were converted to PDFs with the source acknowledged, when known.
Materials were organized by both etiologic process (neoplastic, developmental, traumatic, toxic-metabolic, infectious, inflammatory, degenerative, and hypoxic-ischemic) and the specific domains of neuropathology (surgical pathology, adult or pediatric autopsy neuropathology, forensic neuropathology, neuromuscular pathology).
For each etiology or domain, as appropriate, relevant topic lists, faculty lecture outlines, charts / diagrams / tables, forms, references, and links to Internet resources are compiled. As available, relevant sections from the Interactive Case Study Companion of Robbins and Cotran's Pathologic Basis of Disease, developed by UTSW faculty and available within the intranet, are linked.
Results: This on-line resource will be deployed for use beginning with the 2006-2007 academic year. Feedback obtained from trainees and faculty members and hits on the resources will be used for refinement and improvement.
Conclusion: This neuropathology intranet compendium provides easy access to a diverse set of resources for use in training and during diagnostic sessions. While this compendium would be of great value as an internet resource, copyright restrictions necessitate limiting access to intranet users.