Guessing the Tissue of Origin

Our consultant was doing his usual practical tests on residents and this slide was given. The conditions include identifying the tissue of origin and diagnosing. Normally, we get to know where it came from to narrow down the differentials but we also get cases where the tissue of origin is unknown so we just have to do some guesswork and describe what we saw on the slides.

stem1.jpg

When I saw this slide, the first thing that comes to mind is it looking like a piece of parasite with the spinal cord like appearance common in intestinal worms. I was also entertaining a fetal spinal cord which was equally more common.

We don't process fetuses if when can grossly identify them as one. We give these parts to the folks for burial rites. But there are times when we get sent with specimens labelled products of conception and these consists of irregular pieces of flesh that you can't tell what it is.

stem2.jpg

The beginnings of a spinal cord.

I think I already gave away the answer when I hinted this was the notochord from the above paragraph. It resembled a spinal cord at first glance. Some stuff about pathology I learned is by having some good foundation on basic human histology, you can somehow get a grip on unknown tissue samples on where they are from.

A link to what it can closely look like, it's a rat embryo but mammalian embryology are virtually almost the same during beginning stages.

Guess the tissue of origin:

stem3.jpg

You're right, it's just a cover for our table.

I have yet to encounter this case myself. It's usually just seeing placental tissues and decidua for me. But it's not going to be a surprise when I accidentally load up a fetus on the slide one of these days.

That concludes the trivia.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.

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