The microscopic description is a summary of the features seen when your tissue was examined under the microscope. This section is usually full of unfamiliar words and is intended primarily for other pathologists who may read the report at another time.
Think of the features described in this section as the ‘evidence’ used by your pathologist when arriving at their diagnosis. Often this section includes both the features used to support the diagnosis and the features (or lack thereof) to support another diagnosis.
In difficult cases, this section may explain why the features do not fully support one diagnosis over another or why your pathologist could not come to a definitive diagnosis.
If additional tests were performed on your tissue, the results may also be described here. For example, immunohistochemistry is commonly performed and the results are usually reported as ‘reactive’ or ‘positive’ and ‘non-reactive’ or ‘negative’.
Not all pathology reports will include a microscopic description. Alternatively, some pathologists may choose to put their microscopic description in the comments section.
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