Victor Roggli, MD, attended the Society for Ultrastructural Pathology meeting in Sydney, New South Wales Australia, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, 2024. He presented a talk titled “Chronological Trends in Asbestos-Associated Diseases: Fiber Analysis of 1,150 Cases Over 4 Decades.” His Duke Pathology colleagues John Carney, MD, Carolyn Glass, MD, PhD, Elizabeth Pavlisko, MD, Sergio Piña-Oviedo, MD, and former Duke colleague Thomas Sporn, MD, who is now at East Carolina University Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, were key contributors to the analysis.
He presented the following conclusions from the analysis:
- Asbestos-related diseases have a long latency interval and significant progress in workplace exposures is being observed now as a consequence of the 1972 OSHA regulations.
- Asbestosis cases are decreasing and the percentage of cases of mesothelioma (54%) and lung cancer (13%) that are asbestos-related are decreasing as well. There is still a long way to go to eliminate asbestos-related diseases.
- Electron microscopy provides a useful methodology for determining attribution of neoplastic and non-neoplastic diseases to prior asbestos exposure as well as to document progress in controlling these preventable diseases.
Roggli is on the editorial board of the journal Ultrastructural Pathology and is past president of the Society. He is one of the world’s leading Pulmonary Pathologists with expertise in pneumoconiosis and mesothelioma. He specializes in the use of analytical scanning electron microscopy to identify and to quantify asbestos and other inorganic particulates in lung tissue samples.
He began his career at Duke in 1980 and was first appointed as a professor in 1994. In 2020, The Pulmonary Pathology Society (PPS) presented him with a PPS Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his outstanding clinical and academic contributions to the field of thoracic pathology and his service to the PPS over the years.