Guido Silvestri, MD, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, has served as interim department chair since October 2018. He is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Comparative Pathology and he serves as director of the Division of Microbiology & Immunology at the Emory National Primate Research Center.
Dr. Silvestri received his MD from the University of Ancona, Italy, and after finishing his service in the Italian Navy, he completed his training in Internal Medicine/Allergology and Clinical Immunology. In 2001, Dr. Silvestri received a Board Certification in Clinical Pathology upon completion of a residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
His work is focused on AIDS pathogenesis, prevention, and therapy, mostly using non-human primate models of SIV and SHIV infection, with particular focus on comparative studies of pathogenic and non-pathogenic primate lentiviral infections, as well as studies aimed at eradicating the HIV reservoir. Since 2001, Dr. Silvestri has directed an independent NIH-funded research program. He is currently the principal investigator or a co-investigator of eighteen NIH grants, including a prestigious R37 MERIT award, and is author of 254 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including two studies that appeared in the Feb. 6, 2020 issue of Nature.
Since taking on the interim department role, Dr. Silvestri has recruited numerous physicians in the divisions of anatomic and clinical pathology as well as nine basic and translational scientists. He also has established active partnerships with several other SOM departments and centers, and has developed an aggressive departmental plan to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellness. We look forward to the continued growth and success of this department under Dr. Silvestri’s leadership.
The College of American Pathologists presents George G. Birdsong, MD, FCAP, with a CAP Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions and service within the Council on Scientific Affairs over the years.
Dr. Birdsong has greatly impacted the CAP and the everyday lives of pathologists. His leadership as the former chair of the Pathology Electronic Reporting (PERT) Committee paved the way for pathologists to report on their cancer cases within their laboratory information systems. He has also greatly improved and grown the use and value of CAP electronic Cancer Checklists (eCC) by pathologists through his validation and review work with the Cancer Protocol Review Panel. He has been involved in a multitude of other CAP committees over the years. These include the Informatics (formerly DIHIT) Committee, the Clinical Informatics Steering Committee, and the Cytopathology Committee. In addition, Dr. Birdsong has served as a liaison and CAP spokesperson of note to the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting (ICCR), the IHE-iPaLM group working with SNOMED International, and the in-house PHC Pre-analytics for Precision Medicine Project Team. He is also a member of the House of Delegates, serves on the gynecologic Cancer Protocols review panel, and has worked on CAP advisory groups, ad-hoc committees, and internal boards throughout the years.
Dr. Birdsong has a long record of service to the profession of pathology through involvement in activities outside the CAP. He contributed his considerable experience to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and played a significant part in crafting scientific and technical advice and guidance to the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Birdsong also participated as a work group member of the Gynecologic Cytopathology Quality Consensus Conference to develop an inventory of current practices in gynecologic cytology laboratories in order to standardize procedures for quality improvement.
Dr. Birdsong is a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and director of anatomic pathology at Grady Health System, both in Atlanta.
The Emory Pathology eLearning Portal (EPeP) is an online training site that presents interactive cases and scenarios, asking questions that the trainee must answer to progress through the case. As each question is answered, the trainee is given immediate content-rich feedback. The interactive questions in the cases and scenarios are presented in a progression that allows a simulation as if the case was occurring in real time. For the trainees, the cases and scenarios can be accessed as “unknowns” or by specific topic using the index. For those assessing progress, a certificate with the passing grade can be printed at the end of each module so as to document that the trainee has mastered the concepts.
The EPeP started as a project to have online microbiology vignettes that were presented during microbiology rounds (Spicer JO et al. Am J Clin Pathol 2014 141:318-22). Thus, the largest number of modules are related to microbiology and have been used by students in public health and medicine, pathology and internal medicine residents and infectious disease fellows. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has endorsed its use for training fellows. A publication that evaluated the microbiology modules showed improved knowledge in microbiology by internal medicine residents after they went over a subset of the microbiology modules(Guarner J et al. J Clin Microbiol 2015;53:278- 81).
The EPeP online application has evolved to include other clinical pathology disciplines. It now houses modules in coagulation, transfusion medicine, chemistry, hematopathology, and laboratory administration. The modules dedicated to laboratory administration have been evaluated as part of a laboratory administration curriculum at 2 academic centers (Guarner et al. Am J Clin Pathol 2017;148:368-373). These modules address the pathology system-based practice milestones in a systematic manner and allow for standard instruction of topics even though residents may not have been exposed to issues that did not occur during their training.
For the Medical Education Partnership Initiative, online modules that address questions that clinicians encounter regarding laboratory medicine were created. These modules have been used during a course to train clinicians on laboratory medicine in Ethiopia (Guarner J, et al. Am J Clin Pathol. 2015;143:405- 11). Future modules are planned around anatomic pathology and cytopathology.
You are welcomed to explore the EPeP website. When asked for a username and password, use EPeP (case sensitive) for both.
About the Author
Dr. Jeannette Guarner created the concept of EPeP and worked closely with others to bring her concept to fruition. She molds each and every case module personally before sending it for publication to the production server. Dr. Guarner is a Professor of Pathology, Director of Emory University Hospital Midtown, and Associate Director of Emory Medical Laboratories.
It all began nearly two years ago with an unexpected email from the Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the flagship journal of the College of American Pathologists (CAP):
“Dear Tris: … I would like to know if you would be interested in having a Special Section in Archives … written by faculty from your department at Emory?”
By the time it was finished, the project had blossomed into a two-part tour-de-force in the journal’s March and April editions. Altogether it comprised ten authoritative, state-of-the-art reviews that illustrate how emerging new concepts and technologies are re-shaping the daily clinical practice of our profession. The articles each focused on one or two subspecialty fields and together spanned a gamut of topics in laboratory medicine and surgical pathology, as exemplified by the two cover articles on genomic analyses in diagnostic neuropathology and on digital image analysis. Three other articles in the Special Section—on breast, genitourinary, and hematopathology—were selected to be part of the CAP’s “Archives Applied” program, which offers continuing medical education resources to the CAP’s 17,000 members and subscribers worldwide.
A total of 50 Emory Pathology faculty contributed as authors of this major collaborative effort.
by Colleen Kraft, MD, Associate Professor of Pathology
During the care of patients with hemorrhagic fevers in Emory’s Serious Communicable Disease Unit (SCDU) in 2014 and 2016, I always had an interest to go and serve in West Africa. I had been to East Africa a number of times in my undergraduate and medical school training and had enjoyed as well had been challenged by those experiences. I felt that my role at Emory Hospital during the outbreak was the most important role I could fill and that it was critical for my family and myself to remain on the U.S domestic front.
In December of 2015, we were concerned about our 3rd patient’s eyesight, and we involved the Emory Eye Center, specifically Dr. Steven Yeh, a uveitis specialist to help with the management. He performed an anterior chamber paracentesis on a Sunday afternoon, and the medical technologists in our department performed the Ebola virus PCR that diagnosed the virus’ presence in the aqueous humor (and resulted in them having to take their temperature twice daily for 21 days, again!).
This changed the way we viewed Ebola survivors, since in our specific patient, his viremia had been resolved for over 2 months. This led Steve to be motivated to understand the eye conditions in Ebola survivors. By May of 2016, Steve and his team had already been to Liberia once, and Sierra Leone 3 times!
During these visits to West Africa, Steve and his team created the EVICT study: “Ebola Virus Persistence in Ocular Tissues and Fluids” to study Ebola and the eye in West Africa.
They determined for this study that they wanted one of our SCDU team members to serve as a safety person in Sierra Leone for this project. I was able to travel to Freetown in June of 2016 and supported the team as they performed anterior paracenteses on 21 individuals. As usual, one role in a resource-limited usually turns into more, so I also had the opportunity to coordinate the laboratory testing to 3 different laboratories, perform phlebotomy, and trash removal, making my department proud! The photo (far right) that accompanies this article is a picture of us working in the makeshift OR suite in Sierra Leone.
The surgeries took place in the Lowell and Ruth Gess UMC Eye Hospital that was located in Freetown and we worked with several advocacy groups to recruit Ebola survivors who had cataracts. This trip has been a very small part of Steve's work in Sierra Leone, and since that trip in June of 2016 they have gone back numerous times and performed many more cataract surgeries on Ebola survivors. For me, it was a great opportunity to go to the region of the outbreak and to understand more about the context and to be able to directly help people who have been affected by this disease.
