| The recent release of the 21st edition of this authoritative text marks almost a century in publication. This edition has been renamed, in tribute to Dr. John Bernard Henry, as "Henry's Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods." However, this is not the first time the book has been re titled since first appearing in 1908 as, "A Manual in Clinical Diagnosis." Richard A. McPherson, MD, one of two Editors, is joined by colleague and Associate Editor H. Davis Massey, MD, PhD, and nine other contributing experts, including a Chief Resident and a Fellow of Hematopathology, from the VCU Department of Pathology. Dr. McPherson has been a contributing expert for over 20 years, since 1984, when he authored a chapter on "Specific Proteins" in the 17th edition. He served as Assistant Editor for the 17th and 20th editions and has contributed to every edition since.
"I met John Henry in 1982 when I joined the faculty at Georgetown University Medical School where he was the dean. He always encouraged junior faculty members to write and edit, so he asked three of us there to assist in editing the 17th edition. I had strong research and clinical interests in proteins, and so he also asked me to take over the chapter on specific proteins."
Updated throughout, this comprehensive textbook includes new sections on Hemostasis and Thrombosis, a new chapter on the microbiologic aspects of bioterrorism, as well as a new section on the Clinical Pathology of Cancer.
When queried about the role of Clinical Pathology in medicine of the future, Dr. McPherson had the following comments:
"Newer technologies in molecular testing and proteomics hold out the promise for whole new types of patient evaluations that have formerly been reserved only for individuals with high suspicion of diseases such as hereditary conditions in a family. The new testing will be directed to genetic conditions such as the ability to metabolize drugs, risk factors for developing diseases, and probably planning how to genetically reengineer those disorders. Infectious disease testing will be radically advanced with nucleic acid amplification techniques being used in the initial evaluation of patients in place of traditional cultures. Newborn screening has recently been expanded from 9 diseases to 28 diseases in the state of Virginia by use of new mass spectra methods that allow simultaneous examination for multiple abnormalities in heel stick blood specimens. The same general principle of multiplexing perhaps up to 50 or more tests at one time will be permitted in many different areas, including: autoantibodies, viral serologies, virus detection in direct specimens, and metabolic components. The risk from doing so many tests is that some innocuous variations will be detected and potentially labeled as suspicious for disease and requiring more expensive confirmatory testing. So the challenge for laboratories will be to generate all these new test results accurately, provide appropriate interpretation (including statistical analysis), and then report them with sophisticated information systems that provide meaningful communication to both physicians and patients." |
For additional information contact Richard A. McPherson, MD
(804) 828-6767 x 340
ramcpher@vcu.edu
VCU Contributing Experts
Jonathan Ben-Ezra, MD
Andrea Ferreira-Gonzalez, PhD
Carleton T. Garrett, MD, PhD
H. Davis Massey, MD, PhD
Richard A. McPherson, MD
W. Greg Miller, PhD
Roger S. Riley, MD, PhD
Susan D. Roseff, MD
Kimberly W. Sanford, MD, MT(ASCP)
David S. Wilkinson, MD, PhD
Shourong Zhao, MD, MS
|
