clinical-pathology

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Clinical pathology

, Laboratory Medicine (Germany), Biopathology (Greece), or Clinical/Medical Biology (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria...) is a medical specialty that is concerned with the diagnosis of disease based on the laboratory analysis of bodily fluids such as blood and urine, using the tools of chemistry, microbiology, hematology and molecular pathology. Clinical pathologist work in close collaboration with medical technologists.

Clinical pathology is itself divided in subspecialties, the main ones being clinical chemistry, clinical hematology/blood banking and clinical microbiology.

Clinical pathology is one of the two major divisions of , the other being anatomical pathology. Often, practice both anatomical and clinical pathology, a combination known as general pathology. Similar specialties exist in veterinary pathology.

Licensing and subspecialties

The American Board of Pathology certifies clinical pathologists, and recognizes the following secondary specialties of clinical pathology:

Chemical pathology, also called clinical chemistry
Hematopathology
Blood banking - Transfusion medicine
Clinical microbiology
Cytogenetics
Molecular genetics pathology.

In some countries other subspecialties are under certified Clinical Biologists responsibility:

In some countries in South-America, Europe, Africa or Asia, this specialty can be exercised by non-physicians, such Pharm.D after a variable number of year of residency. For example, in France, Clinical Pathology is called Medical Biology ("Biologie médicale") is both exercized by M.D. and Pharm.D and this residency lasts four years. Specialists in this discipline do not called "Clinical pathologist" but "Clinical Biologist".