Help me in understanding histology

[gustavoreche]

Hello, I'm starting to study histology and I'm finding it kind boring. I began with epitelial tissue, and there are several types of it which relates to a part of the body. But I dont understand it, I dont grasp it. Ok, I know that simple squamous epithelia are found in capillaries or simple cuboidal epithelia are found on the surface of ovaries, but why is that? How these differences on epithelium counts?
You guys know some book, online courses that focus more at understanding?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[TypeADissection]

Uh I’m not the best person to answer this but I just memorized a bunch of stuff and left the understanding part of the equation to someone else. The lecture notes kinda guided me towards what I thought was important to know for exams. And that’s basically it. If you’re stressing out over not understanding something, wait until you get to Nephro...

 

[tf21594]

In my opinion, histology is a "memorize it" and move on subject. there's not really a lot of reasoning through problems as there is in pharm, physio, path, etc.

 

[ciucia53]

I found Junqueira's Basic Histology to be a helpful reference textbook when I was going through histology. See if it's available through your medical school's library.

 

[Prolegomenon]

Histology is very important for understanding the levels of biological organization (at least to me). Once you understand the cells, you can more easily identify the tissue, the organ, etc each slide may be composed of. There are 3 major kinds of epithelia and each have corresponding characteristics. Pretty much everything anatomically is covered in some form of epithelial tissue. The pericardium, pleura, peritoneum, and mesentery are among the most important serous membranes and even get their own names.
Anyways, I know a channel on YT called Ken hub and they have histology videos. No affiliation (hope I'm not breaking rules). I have not watched those specific videos by them personally so I cannot attest to their helpfulness. Hope you find what you're looking for.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using SDN mobile

 

[wholeheartedly]

i liked our book for putting things into the context of the bigger picture Histology: A text and Atlas: with correlated cell and molecular biology by Ross and Pawlina

 

[Crayola227]

don't really see the issue... you can't see how form follows function in histology? like anyone it was a struggle to recognize stuff on sight and memorize what needed memorizing, otherwise I found that a form and function approach like in Junquiera's is good way to approach learning it

 

[Goro]

Hello, I'm starting to study histology and I'm finding it kind boring. I began with epitelial tissue, and there are several types of it which relates to a part of the body. But I dont understand it, I dont grasp it. Ok, I know that simple squamous epithelia are found in capillaries or simple cuboidal epithelia are found on the surface of ovaries, but why is that? How these differences on epithelium counts?
You guys know some book, online courses that focus more at understanding?

You need to start thinking and applying. What do the cells DO, not just where are they?

A lot of histo is pattern recognition, and medical education has moved far from the days of Flexner when a doc would likely do his own biopsy, stain a specimen and then make a Pathology diagnosis. I wish we can move the field out of the pre-clincial curriculum and save it for Pathologists and dermatologists, but until the NBME and NBOME decide otherwise, we're stuck with it.

 

[hardpecs]

Histo is both the lowest yield and possible the foundation for the highest yield subject, depending on how you look at it.
Lowest yield, because it has almost no direct clinical tie-in. High yield because you need to at least be generally aware of the different cell types and organs and how they look normally, in order to do well at the highest yield subject - Pathology.

This website basically got me through all the internal histology examinations. Id say this + shotgun histo videos + Junquieras (if your school really likes nitpicky details), and you're sorted.
Histology Guide

 

[Crayola227]

I agree histology is more important than typically appreciated, and I disagree it should be moved out of the pre-clinical curriculum sorry @Goro . Then again this reflects the fact that I tend to be pretty traditionalist and conservative about what is included in education and its importance.

More than once I have found what I learned in medical school to impact how I read a pathology report. You don't really get to visually inspect the slide, and believe it or not those descriptions of what the specimen looks like that you get from the pathologist coupled with everything else, can make a difference. It's similar to how I'm not an expert in radiology, but I need to be familiar enough to read a film, read the radiologist's interpretation, and then under the section "clinical correlation needed" I'm the one deciding what to do with it. A few times has a pathologist read the slide, but given what I knew of the whole patient, I was able to interpret the pathology report description to come to a slightly different but correct conclusion for what it meant.

This is all probably consistent with a few things, my own temperament, and the fact that I think histology was well taught at my school, and that there is probably a middle ground of how much histology do medical students really need and how much can you justify cutting.

 

[CherryRedDracul]

Histo is both the lowest yield and possible the foundation for the highest yield subject, depending on how you look at it.
Lowest yield, because it has almost no direct clinical tie-in. High yield because you need to at least be generally aware of the different cell types and organs and how they look normally, in order to do well at the highest yield subject - Pathology.

This website basically got me through all the internal histology examinations. Id say this + shotgun histo videos + Junquieras (if your school really likes nitpicky details), and you're sorted.
Histology Guide

Well put.

Honestly, remembering histology is what helps me think of a differential when I'm looking at imaging. YMMV

 

[Treebeard]

It is boring.

That said, I liked the series of youtube videos called Histology Helper.

 

[Samuel88]

I second the Junqueira's Basic Histology recommendation
Pretty dull stuff though and it doesn't stick well either.
I'd say epithelial types, blood cells, vascular structure, liver histo, and the nephron are probably the highest yield and show up again.

More specific stuff is not so key. Brain cortex histo is just a bunch o squiggly lines to me

 

[Oso]

Hmm.


I never understood it and I guess I never will.

 

[Robin-jay]

Histology is not too bad. memorize it, cherish it, love it, embrace it, and do whatever you want with it until you're good enough to score well in the class and move on.

 

[Peach Newport]

Just do your best to memorize the subjects. There is very little, if any, histology on step 1 (I had zero histology questions). It seems to me the importance of histology is establishing a good background for pathology, which you need to know cold inside and out.

 

[aldol16]

Lots of purple stuff in disarray somewhere = bad.

Think about the structure of the cells and relate that to function. Squamous cells are typically useful as a protective layer because they're flat and you can stack a lot on top of one another for protection. So surfaces that experience a lot of rubbing and friction have a lot of squamous cells like your skin, vocal cords, anus, etc. Columnar cells are long and useful for excreting things because they have cytoplasm that you can pack secretory granules into and stuff. So they're gonna be in the mucous areas like the lungs, etc.