In The Department of Pathology, we are the most interested in clarifying cardiovascular diseases with both clinical data and pathological views. In the autopsy cases of acute myocardial infarction, we are comparing why cardiac muscle becomes necrosis, which and how coronary arteries occlude morphologically to angio-graphical views in their lifetime to apply for the future clinical cases. These autopsy findings help to reveal a risk factor of myocardial infarction.

In the members consist of the head, three pathologist staffs, two residents and a chief resident are making the pathological diagnoses of all kinds of cardiovascular diseases. We diagnose a part or all the parts of organs from a patient by macroscopic, microscopic, immunohistochemical and ultrastructural methods. Three medical technologists, all qualified for cytoscreener, support seven doctors in the department of pathology.

Our work contains three parts: autopsy, biopsy, pathological research. Firstly, the autopsy is the most important work. We dissect the patients who died in our hospital for observing organ changes which we could not investigate autemortem examination in their lives and helping for the future cases. Thus, we assess treatment effects and investigating the diseases themselves. Owing to the sincere donation of the bereaved families, the autopsy rate of our hospital has always ranked in the top ten in Japan and ranked number one in 1994. The number of the autopsies counts over 2400 cases in the present and all of them are preserved and stored. The second, the biopsy is to diagnose macroscopically and microscopically the part of organs obtained by catheterization, endoscope, operation and so on. The last, the pathological research is the specimens from the autopsy experiments and animal examinations, we are studying the cardiovascular diseases in the pathological method and presenting the results actively in the academic congress.