P.D. James opens Addenbrooke’s new Histopathology facilities

Crime writer P.D. James will visit Addenbrooke’s on Friday 26 February to open a new wing of the hospital’s Histopathology Department.

 

Pathologists at Addenbrooke’s carry out diagnostic tests and interpret the results for patients across the region. When the department opened in 1973, eight consultants handled 7,500 specimens a year – but the workload has grown over time and there are now 30 consultants handling over 40,000 specimens a year.

 

 

Those staff needed new accommodation – and so the department is expanding into the new 450 square metre Gresham Wing, which provides 19 individual offices and a seminar room. It is named after Professor Austin Gresham, an academic and clinical histopathologist who spent his entire post-graduate career in Cambridge. He died in 2009 at the age of 84.

 

Baroness James said: “I am honoured to be opening the Gresham Wing. My family, like all other Addenbrooke’s patients, has benefited from the essential service provided by the Histopathology Department, and this new wing will facilitate the development of a service without which effective diagnosis and treatment would be impossible.”

 

Dr John Grant, head of the Histopathology Department, said: “These are excellent new facilities for pathologists. They let us all work in the same area of the hospital, which helps us to discuss difficult cases together.  It also facilitates the teaching of junior doctors and our research activities. The single rooms also mean we have the best possible conditions in which to carry out complex work without interruption.

 

“Professor Gresham was a much-admired man who almost single-handedly provided a histopathology service to Addenbrooke’s before the current department opened. He worked tirelessly for others, and we are very pleased to remember his life in this way.”

 

Work carried out in the department includes the examination of tissue samples, diagnostic screening of body fluids, cervical smear screening, male infertility screening, and hospital and coroner’s autopsies.

The opening will also be attended by Professor Gresham’s widow, Dr Gwen Gresham.

 

 

 

 

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