“We’ve recruited authors who are at the top of their game and who will give us the state-of-the-art information in their particular area.” – Dr. John Goldblum
I grew up in a family of physicians. Every Goldblum from Pittsburgh is a physician, though I was the first one to go into pathology. I grew up knowing a little about pathology from an uncle who was a well-known pathologist in Detroit. In medical school, typically what happens in the pathology course lab is that a bunch of students sit around and look at slides and most people don’t really know what they’re looking at. There’s always one guy in every class who has to go around and show his classmates what they’re looking at. I was that guy. Pathology is just sort of one of those things that I didn’t know I had the skill to do until I was put into the position to do it. I like doing it, and so I pursued it from that point on. I figured it was the thing that I should do.
Pathology is changing. It’s still all about the microscope, but molecular pathology is rapidly becoming a part of our field — and not just as part of an academic discussion. It’s becoming part of our everyday practice and it infiltrates different subspecialties at different speeds. My areas are gastrointestinal (GI) pathology and soft-tissue pathology. In soft-tissue pathology in particular, I use molecular pathology every day as part of my practice. Five years ago I didn’t necessarily do that, and five years from now it could potentially be a part of virtually every case that I do in soft-tissue pathology. Molecular pathology is also starting to sneak into GI pathology in terms of the evaluation of colon cancer, for example. I think this will begin to happen in every subspecialty. Clearly the biggest change in the field is the integration of molecular pathology into everyday practice, which will be an adjunct to looking at the microscope, though it won’t replace the microscope.
Enzinger and Weiss’s Soft Tissue Tumors is sort of the bible of surgical pathology. When the two giants in the field, Enzinger and Weiss, started writing that textbook, relatively little was ever written about soft-tissue pathology. It is still true today, although more is known and more is now being written in other sources. But that book still remains the go-to book for soft-tissue pathology for many surgical pathologists around the world. GI pathology is similar. It’s a huge field — virtually every pathologist does some GI pathology and some do a lot of GI pathology. So, we decided to put all of the GI pathology into one textbook — Surgical Pathology of the GI Tract, Liver, Biliary Tract and Pancreas, which had really not been done prior to that.
It’s always a challenge with textbooks in particular to keep them up-to-date because fields change so much. However, for all of the books, we’ve recruited authors who are at the top of their game and who will give us the state-of-the-art information in their particular area. My job as an editor is to make sure that that’s all included in the books.
John R. Goldblum, MD, FCAP, FASCP, FACG, is a professor of pathology at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and chairman of the Department of Anatomic Pathology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He specializes in the interpretation of biopsy and resection specimens in the fields of soft tissue pathology and gastrointestinal pathology. He is an author of Surgical Pathology of the GI Tract, Liver, Biliary Tract and Pancreas and Enzinger and Weiss’s Soft Tissue Tumors.
Dr. Goldblum has lectured extensively nationally and internationally in the field of anatomic pathology, and has authored over 275 peer-reviewed articles. He is board-certified in anatomic pathology by the American Board of Pathology, and is a member of several professional associations, including the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, American Society for Clinical Pathologists, Gastrointestinal Pathology Society, and American Gastroenterological Association. Among Dr. Goldblum’s recognitions are the Arthur Purdy Stout Annual Prize Award, Top Doc’s, Cleveland Magazine, and has been recognized as a Best Doctor.
Related Author: Robert D. Odze, MD, FRCP(C)
