Recipient of Royal College of Physician and Surgeons of Canada Continuing Professional Development Activity Grant

November 24, 2016

The Anatomic Pathology Division of Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, St. Paul’s Hospital has recently been approved for a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Activity Grant of $1,000 from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada towards the upcoming CPD activity, “Standardization of reporting inflammatory activity in IBD biopsies”, directed by Dr. Wei Xiong.  This is the first RCPSC CPD grant received by our department. 

Recent studies have demonstrated that the histologic activity in the biopsies from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients has significant impact on the clinical management, relapse risk and risk stratification for dysplasia.  However, a standard grading system for the disease activity has not been implemented among pathologists in many hospitals, including our department.  In our preliminary survey, there is a lack of understanding in the clinical significance and criteria for grading disease activity in IBD biopsies among our pathologists. This proposed learning activity intends to educate the pathologists the importance of histologic disease activity and establish a practical grading system that can be easily implemented in the daily pathology practise. 

The learning objectives are:
• Understand the clinical importance of grading activity in colonic biopsies for IBD patients.
• Be familiar with the grading systems reported in the literatures and clinical trials.
• Be able to recognize the histological features used to grade activity in IBD biopsies.
• Contribute to establishing the grading system.
• Be able to consistently apply the established grading system to assess disease activity in IBD biopsies.

For more information on the Royal College grant, click here.