Obtaining an Accurate Diagnos... Video Transcript

Participants

, Peter Banks MD

Summary

Making an accurate diagnosis is important to the selection of the proper treatment of lymphoma. Learn how the different grades of lymphoma can affect your diagnosis.

Webcast Transcript

DONNA SHU: This is a particularly important presentation, "Obtaining an Accurate Diagnosis." I know that there are many cases where there have not been accurate -- there has not been an accurate diagnosis made. And of course, as you know, if you don't have an accurate diagnosis, it's impossible, then, to figure out what your treatment options are. So this is a very important presentation.

Dr. Banks is an internationally-recognized specialist in hematologic pathology. He conducts a very busy consultative practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has a clinical appointment as professor of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Dr. Banks has authored a large number of original publications, including chapters in current editions of both hematology and pathology texts. He is a founding member of the International Lymphoma Study Group, authors of the REAL -- R-E-A-L -- classification of 1994. And from 1996 to 1998, was president of the Society for Hematopathology.

Would you please welcome Dr. Banks. [APPLAUSE]

PETER BANKS, MD: Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Donna.

This a great weekend for me, because the two most interested, enthusiastic and attentive audiences I ever speak to, I am encompassing in this one weekend tour. The second-most attentive audience I ever speak to is the board review course for medical oncology examination, which was yesterday in Washington. And the most attentive and most enthusiastic is the Lymphoma Research Foundation of America. [APPLAUSE]

Because it is almost essential in establishing credentials nowadays, I should mention that I too have a website. I am negligent in not providing a slide of it. But I have put -- if any of you are interested -- some postcard representations of it. It is very simply "drpeterbanks.com," so it's as if you had "Dr." but without a dot. So it's "D-R-peterbanks-dot-com." As a website, if you're interested in seeing what we are doing, and there is a page about hematopathology and support organizations and the LRFA is mentioned.

When I am done with my brief presentation this afternoon, many of the terms which you have heard of, which you have lived with for months and years, will have a meaning which they have not had before. If you are not actually experts on the pathology of lymphoma, you will be very knowledgeable when I am finished.

Can I have the next slide, please?

Now, lymphomas are diagnosed or defined as solid neoplasms of the immune system. And "solid" is, of course, in contradistinction to leukemias, which are malignancies in the circulation.

Now, it's interesting that we've heard a lot about the immune system this weekend, because lymphomas, of course, derive from the immune system and -- as is always the case -- we don't appreciate things when they are working properly, only when they are not working properly. The immune system is normally inapparent to us.

And the greatest concentration of the immune system within our bodies are these little organs, which we call "lymph nodes." We are typically not aware of lymph nodes, unless we have an upper respiratory infection or some stimulus like that, and then we have a soreness and a swelling in these little structures.

And they are not randomly distributed. They are present by design at the intersection of the lymphatic vessels, these normally transparent little vessels which conduct the clear fluid out of our peripheral tissues and back into our circulation. We aware of lymphatics only when things become obstructed, and we develop what is called "edema" or "swelling" of tissues.

But the lymphatic circulation is very important to us.