Names or diagnoses Even if there is perfect agreement that a collection of cells or piece of tissue can be given a certain name with a high level of agreement, the name itself may be meaningless. The name may just not convey that a person is at risk of disease or has a disease. A diagnosis implies that a patient has a disease with a certain prognosis, established scientifically. This is not always the case. Eels in grease Diagnostic tests, of whatever type and done in any specialty, have their problems.
Similar problems occur in other areas, and in diagnosis done in test tubes.
Bandolier was moved to run this article because of the realistic attitude being taken by pathologists about their profession and by the forceful attitudes expressed in both the British and American pathology journals. ER Farmer, R Gonin, MP Hanna. Discordance in the histopathologic diagnosis of melanoma and melanocytic nevi between expert pathologists. Discordance among expert pathologists in diagnosis of melanocytic neoplasms.