Colour has an omnipresent role in histopathology which underpins daily diagnostic processes; through assessment of saturation, hue, intensity and contrast to ultimately formulate a diagnosis. Colour vision deficiency, despite having an estimated population incidence of 8% in men and 0.5% in women 1 is under-recognised within the professional laboratory space in addition to its consequences. Within a cohort of twenty-eight individuals surveyed including scientists, cytologists, anatomical pathology registrars, and anatomical pathologists, three individuals self-reported colour vision deficiencies, all of which were within the congenital red-green spectrum. This qualitative analysis explores the practical impact of colour vision deficiency within histopathology, misconceptions regarding potential perceived obstacles, adaptive mechanisms and the role of digital pathology. The challenges faced by our participants reflected those of similar cohorts 1 and participants reported that colour vision deficiency had minimal impact in histological assessment and were attenuated by a range of adaptive mechanisms including increased attentiveness to cytomorphology, secondary review of specific stains and digital contrast enhancement.
Soosaipillai et al. (Sun,) studied this question.