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Virtual slides are high-magnification digital images of tissue sections, stored in a multi-resolution file format. Using appropriate software, these slides can be viewed in a web browser in a manner that closely simulates examination of glass slides with a real microscope. We describe the successful implementation of teaching microscopic pathology with virtual slides and, for the first time, their use in summative assessment. Both students and teaching staff readily adapted to the use of virtual microscopy. Questionnaire feedback from students strongly indicated that virtual slides solved a number of problems in their learning, while providing good to excellent image quality. A deliberate policy of allocating two students per workstation promoted collaboration and helped to maintain interest in microscopic pathology. The use of a secure browser facilitated assessment using virtual slides, with no technical or security issues arising despite high peak demand. The new Medicine programme at the University of New South Wales will exclusively utilize virtual microscopy for the study of both histology and histopathology. We believe that the use of high-quality learning resources such as virtual slides can ensure that microscopic examination of tissues remains both meaningful and interesting.

The University of Iowa College of Medicine histology teaching laboratory incorporates extensive Web- and computer-based teaching modalities, including the Virtual Microscope (VM), as emerging learning aids in histology and pathology laboratory instruction. We report here our experience in offering a multiple resource-based approach to laboratory instruction while retaining the opportunity and requirement of examining actual microscopic slide preparations with the microscope. Acceptance of this approach has been high among our students and faculty, and performance levels established over years of teaching histology by traditional means have been maintained.

Background: The International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium (InterLymph) provides an opportunity to analyze the relationship between cigarette smoking and nonHodgkin lymphoma with sufficient statistical power to consider non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtype. The results from previous studies of this relationship have been inconsistent, likely due to the small sample sizes that arose from stratification by disease subtype. To clarify the role of cigarette smoking in the etiology of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, we conducted a pooled analysis of original patient data from nine case-control studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma conducted in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Methods: Original data were obtained from each study and uniformly coded. Risk estimates from fixed-effects and twostage random-effects models were compared to determine the impact of interstudy heterogeneity. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were derived from unconditional logistic regression models, controlling for study center, age, sex, and race.

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