Update on infectious enterocolitides and the diseases that they MIMIC

Abstract

The anatomical pathologist's ability to diagnose infections (including gastrointestinal infections) in tissue sections has improved greatly in recent years. With the increasing number and availability of new molecular assays and immunostains, pathologists’ understanding of the correlation between histological patterns of inflammation and specific organisms or groups of organisms has expanded, as has our understanding of how closely infections can mimic other frequently encountered diseases in gastrointestinal pathology (e.g., chronic idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease and ischaemia). Anatomical pathologists play a critical role in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal infections, as the examination of slides may provide a much more rapid result than microbiological cultures or other laboratory assays, and often cultures are not obtained before the patient is treated with antibiotics. This lecture will focus primarily on food and water-borne infectious enterocolitides, and how to distinguish them from other commonly encountered entities in gastrointestinal pathology.