About Human Pathological Conditions
Pathology is the study of disease by scientific methods. The word pathology came from the Latin words “patho” & “logy”. ‘Patho’ means disease and ‘logy’ means study, therefore pathology is a scientific study of disease. Diseases may, in turn, be defined as an abnormal variation in structure or function of any part of the body. Pathology gives explanations of a disease by studying the following four aspects of the disease.
- Etiology,
- Pathogenesis,
- Morphologic changes and
- Functional derangements and clinical significance.
Understanding of the above core aspects of disease (i.e. understanding pathology) will help one to understand how the clinical features of different diseases occur & how their treatments work. This understanding will, in turn, enable health care workers to handle & help their patients in a better & scientific way. In addition, the pathologist can use the morphologic changes seen in diseases to diagnose different diseases. There are different diagnostic modalities used in pathology. Most of these diagnostic techniques are based on morphologic changes.