The greatest change since the last edition has been increasing use of nucleic acid probes (“DNA Probes”), especially with amplification by the polymerase chain reaction, in bacterial and viral infectious disease, leukemia and lymphoma phemotyping, and genetic diagnosis. Another significant trend has been proliferation of immunologic tests for prognosis of varying types of cancer, especially breast carcinoma. A third very active area is use of immunologic methods to differentiate malignant from nonmalignant cells or to determine tissue specificity of poorly differentiated or undifferentiated neoplasms, as well as a wider use of flow cytometry in diagnosis, differentiation, and prognosis of malignancies. There has been increased.
