Clinical pathology

Clinical pathology is a medical speciality concerned with illness diagnosis based on laboratory examination of biological fluids such as blood, urine, and tissue homogenates or extracts employing chemistry, microbiology, haematology, molecular pathology, and immunohaematology methods. A medical residency is required for this speciality.

Clinical pathology is a term used in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, many Commonwealth countries, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Japan, and Peru; countries that use the equivalent in their native language of “laboratory medicine” include Austria, Germany, Romania, Poland, and other Eastern European countries; other terms are “clinical analysis” (Spain) and “clinical/medical biology” (Japan) (France, Belgium, Netherlands, North and West Africa).