May 27-31 2024

Institute of Pathology, Medical Faculty University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

DIAGNOSTIC DERMATOPATHOLOGY COURSE

The course is designed for practising pathologists/trainees in pathology and practising dermatologists/trainee dermatologists with a special interest in Dermatopathology. Some knowledge of Dermatopathology is essential. Although the course covers most topics fairly thoroughly, this is not a basic course for beginners. Please be aware that this course is mostly independent study and that you are absolutely not expected to view the whole collection. 

The Course was conceived in 1984 by the original course organisers, Professor Nicholas Wright, Director and Professor of Histopathology at the RPMS, and Dr Robin Russell-Jones, Consultant Dermatologist and Senior Lecturer at the RPMS. In 1994  Dr Russell-Jones became Director of the Skin Tumour Unit at St. John’s Institute of Dermatology, and Professor Wright became Dean of the RPMS and Vice Chancellor of Imperial College. It was then decided to reorganise the course, update the text, replace many of the sections, which had been damaged or faded by a decade of enthusiastic usage. The latter task has been undertaken with considerable dedication by the London Diagnostic Dermatopathology  Courses team : Dr Eduardo Calonje, Director of Dermatopathology at the Institute of Dermatology, Dr Eglantine Lebas MD DipRCPath, and Dr Laszlo Fonyad . who annually revise and include new cases to this unique and superb 1300 slide collection.

Key lecturer is Eduardo Calonje MD DipRCPath and staff lecturers Prof Bostjan Luzar MD Phd , Dr Jose Cardoso MD , Dr Zlatko Marusic MD PhD and Dr Eglantine Lebas MD DipRCPath, The Course lasts for five days. There is a limit to what we can cover in a week-long course, so we have chosen ten main topics and have devoted one nominal four hour sessions to each of them: the topics are chosen so as to cover most, if not all, common groups of dermatopathological patterns. We divided each topic session into three parts. Each session opens with an introductory lecture on the approach to the diagnosis of the conditions contained within the topic. Note that it is not intended that the talk will deal exhaustively with every lesion, but should serve as a general survey of the histopathological approach to diagnosis within the topic field. There follows a microscopy session in which you should examine the sections which have been provided to illustrate the respective topic.

Several black boxes full of sections are available for all course participants. These sets are of considerable value, and have taken a great deal of time and effort to collect. They are on a loan basis for the period of the course duration.To help you appreciate the sections, which as far as possible have been arranged to demonstrate a diagnostic series. An illustrative account is given in a usb stick yours to keep, together with an introduction to the topic and pointers to the differential diagnosis; we hope that in due course this might prove a valuable document for your future use.

The session ends with a “trouble shooting” demonstration session, when a specific case chosen by each lecturer will be shown on the CCTV system.

As far as possible, we have tried to ensure that each section in every set shows the features it is supposed to, but if you cannot find a particular appearance, a member of the teaching staff will be around in the teaching laboratory for consultation purposes, and/ or you may ask for it to be shown during the demonstration session. There are many more sections in the set than can be discussed in detail during the formal demonstration sessions, thus informal contact time during the microscopy period is available for lengthier endeavours. It is also possible that you might not have sufficient time to view all the sections in the time allocated during the day; to facilitate extra time, the whole collection has been digitalized by Dr Laszlo Fonyad and is available to access for 45 days from the end of the course.

CPD points 54

If you have questions, please email info at londondiagnosticdermatopathology dot com.