14
people
singapore health
MAY–JUN 2013
Solving mysteries,
one clue at a time
Being a pathologist may not be quite what TV dramas
make it out to be, but it is similar to doing detective work
Assoc Prof Lim discovered his passion
for pathology when he was an undergraduate at the National University of
Singapore. The subject provided him with
fascinating insight into the fundamentals
of human physiology and disease.
“As a medical student, I liked looking
at slides (of tissue samples), as the information they contain is very ‘visual’. The
study of pathology gives me an understanding of how and why disease occurs,
and how its symptoms present themselves,” he said.
We’re like medical
detectives. we try to
find out what is
wrong with a patient.
Photos: associate professor tony Lim
associate professor tony lim, senior
consultant, pathology department,
singapore general hospital , on what
it’s like to be a pathologist
By karen tee
“For example, if a patient experiences
pain, weight loss or a low blood count, his
surgeon or gastroenterologist might do
a scope in the stomach and see an ulcer
or unidentified mass. They will perform a
biopsy and send the sample to a pathologist like me, who can then tell them if it is
benign, cancer or just an infection.”
Assoc Prof Lim works in the histopathology (the examination of tissues under
a microscope to study a disease) section
of the Pathology Department.
The department processes about 12
million tests a year, while the histopathology section gets about 40,000 diseaserelated specimens annually. Tests are
run on the samples to find out whether
a patient is suffering from cancer, or an
inflammatory or infectious disease.
Bird-watching is like
pathology, said Associate
Professor Tony Lim (below). In
both cases, he has to deduce
the identity of a subject – be it
a bird or disease – by looking
for a variety of clues.
Photo: alecia neo
I
T may be hard to see a link between
bird-watching and pathology, but for
Associate Professor Tony Lim, his hobby
and profession share many similarities.
“Bird-watching is like pathology. When
I spot a bird, all I see at first is its general
appearance. To identify it, I have to use
other information, such as the tree it is
in, the kind of calls it makes and the way
it jumps and flies,” said Assoc Prof Lim,
Senior Consultant, Pathology Department, Singapore General Hospital (SGH).
He goes bird-watching with the Nature
Society about once a month.
“Similarly, when I look at a tissue
sample through a microscope, all I see at
first is the overall pattern and the colours
of the sample. I then study other information to diagnose the disease.
Assoc Prof Lim has had some dramatic
moments in his career. He recalled a
patient whose condition kept deteriorating even though doctors were treating the
symptoms of his disease thoroughly.
It was only after he studied a tissue
sample from the patient that a viral infection was found to be the root of the problem. The patient recovered soon after he
received treatment for the infection.
Incidents like this could have come
straight from an episode of CSI: Crime
Scene Investigation, but Assoc Prof Lim
joked that such shows give many people
the mistaken impression that a pathologist “works on dead bodies”.
Forensic pathologists are the ones
who examine dead bodies to determine
the cause of death. Still, all pathologists
need to think like detectives.
Assoc Prof Lim said: “We have to be
meticulous and hardworking. We need to
be inquisitive and good with our eyes (to
spot clues). We need to be able to match
what we see with what we know about
diseases, which have tell-tale patterns.
“In a way, we are like medical detectives. We try to find out what is wrong
with a patient.”