My Mouth Is Not Watering: The Perplexing World of Salivary Gland Pathology

Time Stamps

00:00 Podcast Intro

00:37 Introduction of Joaquin Garcia, Vice Chair of Laboratories in the Division of Anatomic Pathology and Medical Director of the Histology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic.

00:57 Can you give us a little background as to how you came in to this world of anatomic pathology and also where did this interest of salivary gland tumors come from?

02:09 What are the things that come to your attention when people are asking about salivary gland tumors?

03:13 When you talk about getting a small biopsy, are we talking about getting a punch biopsy for skin or are we talking about a fine needle aspirate where your just getting cytology? 

04:11 Can you get in to a little bit on where this challenge comes from, whether something is benign, malignant, kind of predicting that behavior?

05:46 How do you train up pathologists to make these calls and recognize malignant from benign?

07:04 Can you elaborate on some of the additional testing you’re talking about (immunohistochemical staining and liquid kind of samples)?

08:48 So, in a more targeted way you are able to make a diagnosis. Is that also true for how we are treating these cancers? Are we able to do targeted therapy based on the pathology that we are getting?

09:54 You’ve just recently completed a book “The Atlas of Salivary Gland Pathology.” What surprised you most about what it took to put together this atlas?

10:35 Is it true that head and neck pathology is the most challenging sub-specialty within all of anatomic pathology?

11:02 What sort of things should be features that are concerning, so that when you hear this in the history you really want to do a thorough exam of the patients mouth, face, and neck features?  

13:35 Outro

Resources: 
Atlas of Salivary Gland Pathology, 2019, Springer Publishing (JJ Garcia)