This reading list accompanies the four lectures on eye pathology for the 2020 MSc in Ophthalmology. The articles are mainly open access (freely available). I encourage you to use the list below as a starting point for further reading. I also encourage you to make use of a reference manager: future you will be grateful!
If you come across any other particularly helpful references or online resources, please use the contact form to let me know, and I’ll add them to the list.
Basics of cellular pathology
The (UK) Royal College of Pathologists Training by specialty web page lists the different pathology disciplines that UK trainees can specialise in.
What is Histology by the University of Leeds provides introductory information about histological methods and stains. There’s also a nice video of cutting with a microtome.
An Introduction to Specimen Processing goes into more technical detail about what happens to tissue during the processing stage until it’s embedded in paraffin wax. This site is run by Leica Biosystems, who supply much of the equipment used in our department.
Ophthalmic pathology
Updates in ophthalmic pathology by Mendoza and Grossniklaus (2017). This open access article begins with a brief overview of ophthalmic pathology and its relationship to ocular oncology. It goes through the use of molecular pathology in some common ophthalmic diagnoses (including uveal melanoma, retinoblastoma and lymphomas) and then covers immunohistochemistry and digital pathology
There are various textbooks of ophthalmic pathology available. Unfortunately, I don’t know if you will have physical access to the Joint Library of Ophthalmology at the Institute, where there are several pathology books on the shelves. I haven’t come across any which are available as electronic versions via our library. Here are some print books which I use:
Heegaard, S. & Grossniklaus, H.E.
Eye pathology. An illustrated guide
(Springer, Berlin, 2015).
Eagle, R.C.
Eye pathology. An atlas and text
(Wolters Kluwer, Philadelphia, 2017).
Roberts, F., Thum, C.K.
Lee’s ophthalmic histopathology
(Springer, London, 2014).
Yanoff, M. & Sassani, J.W.
Ocular pathology
(Saunders Elsevier, London, 2015).
Cancer staging
The Community Eye Health Journal, an open-access publication, ran a theme issue on retinoblastoma in 2018. It’s worth a browse, as are the other issues.
TNM: Principles, history, and relation to other prognostic factors by Sobin (2001). This open access article is a useful overview of the TNM staging system and provides a few examples.
The principles of cancer staging by Brierley et al (2016). This is a more recent guide to cancer staging. There’s a link to some educational modules about cancers are non-ophthalmic sites: I haven’t tried them, but they may be useful if you’re curious about TNM in a wider context.
Retinoblastoma stages on the American Cancer Society website gives a brief overview of the clinical retinoblastoma staging systems.
The TNM classification of malignant tumours—towards common understanding and reasonable expectations by O’Sullivan et al (2017) is more of an opinion piece about what TNM “should” be used for, which isn’t recording all data for all cancers.
TNM Classification of Malignant Tumours is the standard reference we use for (nearly all) cancer staging. You don’t need to buy or read it, but be aware it exists.
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