Pathological Anatomy Archives: the need for a paradigm shift.

Abstract

With the advent of personalized medicine, it has become increasingly clear that histological preparations stored in the archives of Pathological Anatomy Departments, from simple "residues" of a diagnostic process, have become containers of large quantities of biopathological information, useful to the patients themselves and to scientific research. For these reasons, taking inspiration from a "near disaster" recently published in Pathologica, we propose a different way of conceiving, managing and protecting these archives.