What is chemical pathology?

Answer 1

Pathology is a medical specialty. A pathologist is an expert in medical investigation and diagnosis. Anyone who wants to become a pathologist will have to study medicine in a medical school, practice medicine to become a registered medical practitioner, and then undertake another five or six years of pathology specialist training to become a pathologist. In some countries pathology is divided into different disciplines or subspecialties. For examples, anatomical pathology (also known as tissue pathology or histopathology), chemical pathology, haematology and microbiology. As you can see, chemical pathology is a subspecialty of pathology. It specializes in the study of chemical substances (for example water, electrolytes, acids, drugs, metabolites, toxins, hormones) and chemical reactions in the body, blood, and body fluids. Chemical pathologists use chemical reactions and or chemical substances to diagnose, monitor and, sometimes, treat diseases. The terms chemical pathology, clinical chemistry and clinical biochemistry are generally loosely used and interchangeable. Strictly speaking, however, the term "chemical pathologist" is referred to a medical qualified pathologist who subspecializes in chemical pathology, whereas a "clinical chemist" is a science graduate who works in the field of chemical pathology. A clinical chemist can also become an expert in clinical chemistry.