Histology/ Histopathology Laboratory at St Thomas' Hospital

Histopathology provides a comprehensive tissue diagnostic service to Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals, the Evelina Children's hospital and local general practitioners. It serves the regional cancer centre and is also a national and international referral centre for expert opinion. The specialist diagnostic and scientific teams aim to deliver the best possible service with access to cutting edge diagnostic techniques through close links with cytogenetics and molecular diagnostics departments. Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDM) are held across both sites enabling close integration of clinical teams and specialist pathologists. the department processes approximately 24,000 per year generating 300,000 slides for analysis. In addition to processing fixed tissue the department offers a frozen section service at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals, incorporating the receipt of fresh tissue for enzyme histochemistry, research, clinical trials and tissue banking.  Within the department is a fully automated immunochemistry laboratory which is a referral centre for HER-2 testing. The laboratory also employs in situ hybridisation and molecular techniques for B and T cell clonality. The dedicated Renal Histopathology service offers attendance at wards for assistance with biopsy collection and also an on call Saturday service. 

The department is also committed to training and development needs of medical, scientific and support staff. 

Areas of expertise

Adult and Perinatal/Paediatric autopsy 
Breast 
Cervical Cancer 
Endocrine 
Gastrointestinal 
General, soft tissue and osteo-articular pathology 
Gynaecology 
Haematopathology 
Infectious/ tropical diseases 
Renal (Adult and Paediatric including Transplantation) 
Respiratory 
Urology 

Specialist and Routine services

Routine Histology, Special stains, frozen sections, Renal histopathology, Immunohistochemistry, IgH and TCR gene rearrangements for B and T cell clonality