Pathology

Hello everyone,

Please have a look at the following sentence:

"A large amount of data have to be analyzed by medical experts, if a pathology is unknown in advance"

In the sentence I've used the word "pathology" in the meaning of a quite serious disorder when something is wrong with an organ or some part of a person's body. For instance, if a person was born with a diseased liver, he is said to have a liver pathology. Am I using the word "pathology" correctly in my examples?

I'm asking because "pathology" also has another meaning as a science studying various disorders in a human body and actually there're many more links on the Internet for this meaning than for the meaning I' was wondering about.

Many thanks

Do you mean unknown (to medical science) or undiagnosed? The word 'pathology' suggests the former.

There still exist people who insist the the word 'data' is plural; and you may be one of them. That's fine - but an amount of anything is singular.

b

Do you mean unknown (to medical science) or undiagnosed? The word 'pathology' suggests the former.

There still exist people who insist the the word 'data' is plural; and you may be one of them. That's fine - but an amount of anything is singular.

b

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BobK

Do you mean unknown (to medical science) or undiagnosed? The word 'pathology' suggests the former.

There still exist people who insist the the word 'data' is plural; and you may be one of them. That's fine - but an amount of anything is singular.

b

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Thanks, Bobk.

Right, I'm one of those who think that "data" is plural because "datum" is singular. In formal technical writing I encounter both forms of auxiliary verbs with data. Concerning "amount", I know, of course, that it's singular, but here I thought that we had to use "have" because of "data". Anyway, I've realized my mistake now.

Regarding my question, I actually mean neither unknown nor undiagnosed. Of course, a pathology can be either, but doesn't have to be so, I think. Saying a pathology, I just mean a condition when there're some organic problems with an organ: for example, a person's liver is damaged because of intense alchologol consumption or a person's heart is bad because of smoking. Pathology is a condition, as far as I understand. This condition can be treated by conservative methods, but sometimes requires surgery.

Am I right?

I think so, but you should wait for a view from the medical community. Ray...?

In supoort of our view, there is the fact that many hospitals have a 'Pathology' department, where they deal with severe disorders of the sort that you're talking about.

b

PS Oh, and you really don't need to tell me about Latin;-)