The College's Standards and Datasets for Histopathology Reporting on Cancers and Tissue Pathways have been written to help pathologists work towards a consistent approach for the reporting of the more common cancers and to define the range of acceptable practice in handling pathology specimens.

The table below provides links to the cancer dataset documents and to the 'tissue pathways' for non-malignant diseases for each site.

More information on datasets, tissue pathways and the Working Group on Cancer Services is available here or by emailing maria.marrero@rcpath.org 

TNM 7: For advice from the SAC and the Working Group on Cancer Services on the implementation of TNM 7 classification, click here.

Cancer datasets	Tissue pathways
General introduction (August 2008)	Guidance on writing tissue pathways (February 2009)
Breast (Oct 2005)	Breast (April 2009)
Bone and soft tissues (in development) Dataset for histopathology reports on primary bone tumours (April 2010) Gastrointestinal stromal tumours Soft tissue sarcomas (Nov 2009)	Bone and soft tissues (in development)
Cardiovascular tissues	Cardiovascular tissues (Oct 2008)
Cytopathology	Cytopathology Exfoliative cytology and FNA cytology (Jan 2010)
Central nervous system (Apr 2008)	Central nervous system
Endocrine Adult adrenal gland (Mar 2006) Neuroblastoma (in development)  Parathyroid  (Feb 2006, under review) Thyroid (Apr 2010) Gastrointestinal endocrine tumours (Mar 2009)	Endocrine (Jul 2008)
Eye  Retinoblastoma (Oct 2007) Conjunctival melanoma (Oct 2007) Uveal melanoma (Oct 2007)	Eye (in development)
Gastrointestinal tract Bile ducts and pancreas (May 2010) Colorectum (Sep 2007) Liver (Sep 2007) Oesophagus (Feb 2007) Stomach (Jan 2007)	Gastrointestinal tract Liver biopsies (May 2008) Gastrointestinal and pancreatobiliary pathology (November 2009)
Gynaecological tissues Cervix (Jun 2008) Endometrium (Jan 2010) Ovary (Jul 2008) Vulva (Jun 2008)	Gynaecological tissues (Jul 2008)
Head and neck tissues  (Jun 2005) Neck dissection specimens Salivary neoplasms  Squamous carcinomas	Head and neck tissues Head and neck pathology (Sep 2008)
Lungs (Sep 2007)	Lungs and pleura Pulmonary pathology  (May 2008)
Lymph nodes and bone marrow lymphomas (Apr 2002)	Lymph nodes, spleen and bone marrow trephine  biopsy specimens  (May 2008, amended August 2010)
Skin (Feb 2002) Basal cell carcinoma Malignant melanoma Squamous cell carcinoma (under review)	Skin Inflammatory and non-neoplastic dermatoses and non-neoplastic lesions (Sep 2008)
Urinary tract and testis Adult kidney (Nov 2006) Nephroblastoma (Oct 2007) Penis (Nov 2006) Prostate (October 2009) Testis (Oct 2007) Urinary collecting system (Jan 2007)	Urinary tract and testis Medical renal biopsies (May 2008) Urological Pathology (May 2010)