Dr. Michael Misialek, MD Interview date: November 8, 2013

Diagnostics are the foundation of our disease and our care. Dr. Michael Misialek reminds us that we have a pathologist that can help understand the confusing results we see on our lab work. He shares that pathologists are not just the Quincy or CSI foresics expert behind the scenes, but they are an important member of our myeloma heath care team who works with our myeloma specialist/oncologist and others to help watch our progress and direct our care. He tells us that the pathologist reviews all  lab work including blood, urine, bone marrow and imaging studies and is willing and available to sit down with us and our family members to help us better understand our results. We can set up an appointment with our pathologist and the meeting is typically offered as a courtesy to patients. To ensure more standardized myeloma testing, he recommends we ask the facility if the lab they use is credentialed and board-certified.  We thought it might be helpful to have a document that describes all of the lab results and important markers for multiple myeloma. This Word document contains a diagnosis summary checklist, a treatment summary form and each lab result described and color-coded for relevance. Special thanks to Dr. Michael Misialek, Dr. Guido Tricot and Jen Higbee for their contributions to this helpful document. The live mPatient Radio podcast with Dr. Michael Misialek