Hello everyone, how are you all? I hope you all are doing well and great. I am too.
As i am not posting regularly but i want to continue posting atleast weekly once. If i get time i will post daily.
Coming to our topic, today we are going to see how mucormycosis looks in the lung tissue and how pathology doctors will diagnose it and give report. We will learn this one with case report

Case

A 68 yead old man came to the hospital with complaints of dysphagia and breathlessness. CT chest done done that suggested infective etiology related changes are there and TBLB,(Transbronvhial ling biopsy) was done.

On microscopic examination these are the structure i found.....

So these marked areas are the fungal hyphae which are broad, foldable,obtuse angled, aseptate. Careful observation of morphology of fungal hyphae is very important because another fungus which cause fungal hyphae but it differs in morphology - Aspergillous is another fungus it shows acute angled, branched, septate fungal hyphae morphology. So here these fungal hyphae is favouring mucormycosis. You can see other images in different magnification

We should mot miss any fungal organisms bcz it has severe threat and leads to death if not treated on time. Infact, mucormycosis is considered as one of the critical alert and clinicians has to start treatment immediately. Thats why we pathologist will have major role in diagnosing the fungus and we have to screen whole slide very carfeull because sometimes it is falling adjacent to the tissue area on the slide and we may miss if we completely focus on tissue itself. If we are not sure its mucormycosis then we have to go for special stain - PAS(Periodic acid schiff) which highlights fungal hyphae.
This is how being a pathologist we will diagnose and will save patient.
I will come with another topic in next post.

References -

• Rosai and Ackerman's Surgical Pathology - 11th Edition

Thanks for reading,
With regards