From the Editor’s desk

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the final quarterly issue of IJPM of the year 2024. As I introduce some of the original studies and other articles published in this issue, I realize that the release of the final IJPM issue of the year somewhat coincides with the Annual IAPM Conference—a platform for showcasing original studies, especially from across the country. Some of those studies have a potential to feature as future IJPM articles. Given this opportunity, it is crucial to curate/select studies for oral/platform presentations with strong prospects as future publications. These oral/platform presentations enable a critical discussion that can further enhance the scientific quality of an otherwise, well designed and conducted study if selected for the appropriate forum. There is also room for specific continuing medical education (CME) sessions, especially those with speakers with domain expertise, leading to collaborative studies and reviews. The systematic reviews are associated with a relatively higher level of evidence. Recently, a new hierarchy of research evidence has emerged in tumor pathology, defined by “P levels,” where the highest, P1, denotes systematic reviews, and the lowest, P5, represents case reports.^[1] Consequently, the proportion of high evidence level manuscripts appearing in a journal directly influences its impact factor

With this background, I am pleased to introduce a couple of interesting articles featured in this issue.

In the opening article, Agarwal et al. present a comprehensive clinical, pathological, mutational, and outcome analysis of poorly differentiated thyroid carcinomas.^[2]

In another article, Rahman et al. present a substantial study on the prevalence and clinicopathological features of driver gene mutation profiles in BCR: ABL1 negative classical myeloproliferative neoplasms.^[3]

Boybay et al. demonstrated the value of HAS2 immunoreactivity as a potential biomarker for predicting resistance to progesterone therapy in patients with endometrial hyperplasia without atypia.^[4]

In another study, Coban et al. showed that increased expression of cyclin D1, particularly concentrated in tumor budding compared to the tumor mass, might indicate a poor prognosis.^[5]

Roy et al. explored the prognostic value of relatively less commonly used tumor regression scoring systems—aside from the Ryan system—for the pathological assessment of post-treated esophageal cancer.^[6]

Additionally, this issue includes several intriguing clinicopathological studies on relatively uncommon tumors, along with certain “emerging” or “provisional” tumor entities described by gene fusions, featured in the brief communications section.

I encourage authors to prioritize submitting well-designed original studies rather than case reports, as the latter are associated with lower levels of evidence.

Happy reading