Dr. Peter Cummings publishes novel featuring neuropathologist as protagonist

Neuropathologists have finally made it into pop culture! Forensic neuropathologist Peter Cummings, MD has recently published a novel entitled The Neuropathology of Zombies. I just read a free Kindle sample of the book, and it's fantastic. The print version of the book will be out next week. Cummings has a website devoted to the book, which even features a zombie neuropathology report complete with a description of the leptomeninges as being "opacified with a black and green discoloration". He may get a movie deal out of this and be able to quit his day job, a la Michael Crichton, MD. Dr. Cummings tells me his novel is the first part in a trilogy. Just to whet your appetite, here's the first paragraph of The Neuropathology of Zombies:

"Marcus Ellsbury was ill. His wife ran out to the drugstore, returning with a bag full of pills. She opened the door to their hotel room and stepped inside. What stood before her was something else. The sound of her scream was silenced by the sudden and violent severing of her spinal cord. Marcus lingered over her dead body, blood dripping from his hands."

Whoa.

Best Post of April 2011: CAP Neuropathology Education CD-ROM is now SAM-eligible!

The next in our "Best of the Month" series is from April 6, 2011:

For those of you who are scrambling to get neuropathology Self-Assessment Module (SAM) continuing medical education credits, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) now has an answer. If you attained your neuropathology board certification after 2006, every two years you must submit to the American Board of Pathology proof that you have obtained 20 SAM-eligible continuing medical education credits. If you subscribe to the CAP Neuropathology Education product, which provides you with two 5-credit SAM modules per year, you've got your requirement covered. This is a particularly attractive option since there are so few neuropathology SAM modules on the market. (For example, the American Association of Neuropathologists currently only offers a single 1-credit SAM module.) I just completed the first 2011 CAP Neuropathology CD-ROM installment. It is outstanding. Each edition features a theme, or  "minisymposium". The current edition's "minisymposium" focuses on tumor predisposition syndromes. (Pictured is a coronal brain section, taken from the current edition of the CD-ROM, of a brain with classic features of a classic tumor predisposition syndrome.) To just get CME credit, you only have to submit to the CAP answers to the questions posed on the CD-ROM itself. But if you want those crucial SAM-designated credits, you must additionally pass a 20-question online post-test.

The CD-ROM product is created by the CAP Neuropathology Committee, whose chair is Dr. Bette DeMasters. She recently informed me that the second 2011 CD-ROM edition will feature the first of a two-part discussion of vascular diseases of the CNS, with University of Florida's Dr. Tony Yachnis as author of the minisymposium introduction. For 2012, Dr. DeMasters tells me that the first edition will feature papillary tumors of the CNS, both primary and metastatic; and the second edition will feature the second part of the vascular disease discussion.

I've always been a big fan of the CAP Neuropathology CD-ROM product, but now it is more than just a quality product. It is now absolutely essential to the young neuropathologist who wants to stay on the good side of the American Board of Pathology.  Thank you, CAP!!!

Update: Since this post's original publication, the second of the 2011 CAP neuropathology education products has arrived in my mailbox.

Benignity in meningioma indicated by smiley face nucleus

Drs. John Donahue and Ed Stopa sent in the photomicrograph below from an article they published in 1999 describing a benign meningioma. They conclude: "In this case, another factor in favor of the tumor being benign is that its nuclei are smiling (arrow)."