Clinical Pathology Topics for Practitioners

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 Sarah Hammond, DVM, PhD 
Owner, New River Valley Pathology Services, LLC

Dr. Sarah Hammond grew up on a small farm in Snowville, Virginia and attended Virginia Tech for her undergraduate degree in Biology as well as her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and PhD in Immunology. She was board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Pathologists in 2014. After several years as faculty at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, she worked for Zoetis, Inc. as the Director of Global Diagnostics Digital Cytopathology (building a global point-of-care digital cytology service) before returning her focus back home to veterinary hospitals in the New River and Roanoke Valleys of southwest Virginia. When not looking in a microscope, Dr. Hammond farms lavender and wrangles many animals and a couple of kids.

Clinical Pathology Topics for Practitioners

We will focus on clinical pathology topics that can have a high impact on patient care, but may not have been emphasized in veterinary school. Topics will include a simplified method of identifying acid-base disturbances, best practices in sample preparation, blood smear review, cytology of skin masses/round cell tumors, and an update on trends in the field.

Agenda

8:00 am – 9:00 am-Registration & Continental Breakfast 

9:00 am-9:50 am-Hematology for Practitioners
This image-based session will highlight shape changes in red blood cells (and what those changes indicate), common and unusual patterns in leukocytes, infectious agents and their mimics, together with common platelet changes.  

10:00 am-10:50 am-Sample Preparation: Getting the Best from Your Pathologist
This session will cover common sample preparation errors that can impact the quality and accuracy of your pathologist’s cytology reports. Best practices for slide preparation, including which aspiration technique to use for a given tissue type, maximizing cellular preservation in lymphoid tissue, creating a monolayer on the slide, and staining methods will be discussed. Differences between point-of-care applications (i.e., digital slide submission) and reference laboratory submission will be included.

11:00 am-11:50 pm-Who's Afraid of Acid-Base?
This talk will introduce a simplified method of identifying and interpreting acid-base disturbances using serum chemistry analysis. The major clinically relevant patterns will be discussed, with a focus on those that have the highest degree of relevance for patient care.

11:50 pm-1:00 pm-Lunch

1:00 pm-1:50 pm Trends in the Field: Digital Cytology, Telecytology and AI
The session will cover some of the major recent shifts in the clinical pathology field with the widespread adoption of digital cytology, telecytology, and the growing use of artificial intelligence in diagnostics. This will include how to effectively use these tools, limitations of each, and how to understand the results that you receive.

2:00 pm-2:50 pm-Cytology I
This session will cover the cytomorphology of round cell tumors with a focus on overlapping features and how to distinguish them. Tumors discussed will include lymphoma, plasma cell neoplasms, histiocytoma, mast cell tumors, transmissible venereal tumor, and malignant melanoma. Biologic behavior will be discussed as well as current treatment modalities for each.

3:00 pm-3:50 pm-Cytology II 
This session will cover the cytomorphology of the most common causes of skin masses in domestic species, including benign keratin-producing epithelial tumors, soft tissue sarcomas/tumors, perianal masses (apocrine gland anal sac adenocarcinoma vs. perianal gland adenoma), mammary tumors, and inflammatory/infectious disorders.