Pediatric pathology

[bosco77]

If most of the fellowships go unfilled yet there are childrens hospitals in every major metropolitan area, does that mean that this is one area of path where the job market might be ok?
Or do these childrens hospitals just hire non-pediatric boarded pathologists to fill their needs?

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[KCShaw]

A kids hospital might only need a couple of surgical pathologists, if that, and they don't necessarily use someone who is ped-path boarded. I suspect a proportion of those hospitals farm their specimens out to a group, which may have a pediatric trained person or two available even if they don't see every single specimen. As for the actual job market, I don't know. When I was closer to general surg path days, I don't remember people running around screaming that they needed more ped-paths, and occasional ped-path trained people would sign on with groups that didn't really see many ped specimens.

 

[lipomas]

Most specimens that come out of kids are easily diagnosed (tonsils, hernia, soft tissue and skin lumps, appendix, pieces of colon, GI biopsies). Add in the fact that pediatric specimens are fairly rare anyway, and it ends up more productive to send out anything challenging unless you are in a large hospital which sees lots of pediatric cases. You can do a fellowship and learn all about bizarre childhood kidney tumors or congenital cystic lung lesions but even in a busy pediatric hospital you're only going to see 1 or 2 of those a year at most. So there aren't that many jobs.

 

[KeratinPearls]

Most specimens that come out of kids are easily diagnosed (tonsils, hernia, soft tissue and skin lumps, appendix, pieces of colon, GI biopsies). Add in the fact that pediatric specimens are fairly rare anyway, and it ends up more productive to send out anything challenging unless you are in a large hospital which sees lots of pediatric cases. You can do a fellowship and learn all about bizarre childhood kidney tumors or congenital cystic lung lesions but even in a busy pediatric hospital you're only going to see 1 or 2 of those a year at most. So there aren't that many jobs.

There are jobs and you can find some in large cities, which may be hard to find if you were looking for a private practice path position. Pediatric/perinatal path fellowships can entail both. Those that go into it are for the most part are research oriented. From what I've read in a previous post is that the pay is not great but the lifestyle is pretty good. Most of the pediatric cases you are going to see are neuroblastomas (not all that common) and pediatric GI (eosinophilic esophagitis and IBD). Wilms you see 1-2 cases/million people. You have your pediatric bone marrows (ALL) and lymph nodes (Hodgkins) as well.

Perinatal path is mostly looking at placentas/POCs and doing fetal autopsies.

 

[mlw03]

I'll add that peds path + forensic path (and passing both boards), makes one even more marketable as a forensic pathologist (doubt folks care too much the other way around). Whether the peds path fellowship actually makes you a better FP is debateable, but it's certainly going to help your job search.

 

[twentyone]

If most of the fellowships go unfilled yet there are childrens hospitals in every major metropolitan area, does that mean that this is one area of path where the job market might be ok?
Or do these childrens hospitals just hire non-pediatric boarded pathologists to fill their needs?

I can't attest to the PP/FP thing since I don't know very much about the FP business, but the rest of these posts are pretty off base, regurgitating the typical adult pathologist's view of pediatric pathology. If you have an interest, do yourself a favor and do a rotation or something with a pediatric pathology practice in a free standing children's hospital. PP can also be mixed with any of the other specialties, and yes, there are even private practice jobs out there. Most groups at larger childrens hospitals are academic (which may account for the specialty being less desirable), and hire only boarded pedi path people.