How to Learn General Pathology: Cellular Injury, Inflammation and Neoplasia in 78 Flashcards

General pathology is the first medical course where vocabulary alone can sink you: necrosis vs apoptosis, exudate vs transudate, hyperplasia vs hypertrophy, metaplasia vs dysplasia vs anaplasia. The Pathology: Cellular Injury, Inflammation & Neoplasia deck (code RI6955, 78 cards) on Flip It turns those definitions into short term → definition flashcards you can drill between lectures.

Sample cards from the deck

The four blocks inside the 78 cards

1. What pathology is and how diagnoses are made — etiology, pathogenesis, morphologic changes, cytopathology vs histopathology, smear test, biopsy (incisional vs excisional, core biopsy), immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, flow cytometry.
2. Cellular injury and adaptation — hypoxia, ischemia, infarction, free radicals and oxidative stress, autophagy, cell membrane damage, mitochondrial damage, DNA damage, the role of calcium in cellular injury, reperfusion injury, chemical and physical injury, hyperplasia, hypertrophy, atrophy, metaplasia, dysplasia, anaplasia.
3. Inflammation and repair — acute vs chronic inflammation, cytokines, chemotaxis, phagocytosis, neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes, exudate vs transudate, vascular permeability, vasodilation, the complement system, opsonization, adhesion molecules, granulation tissue, granuloma, abscess, suppuration, fibrosis, edema, regeneration vs scar formation, growth factors, angiogenesis, primary vs secondary intention healing.
4. Neoplasia — neoplasm, benign vs malignant tumours, metastasis, grading vs staging, tumour angiogenesis, tumour invasion.

Two tips specific to this material

Drill the contrast cards first. The deck contains explicit pairs — cytopathology vs histopathology, incisional vs excisional biopsy, necrosis vs apoptosis, benign vs malignant, exudate vs transudate, regeneration vs scar, primary vs secondary intention. Exam writers build distractors from exactly these pairs, so learn the distinguishing feature (inflammation, protein content, tissue loss) before the definition itself.

Build the injury cascade in order. Hypoxia → ischemia → mitochondrial damage → calcium influx → membrane damage → necrosis is one chain. Learning the cards in that sequence lets you reconstruct any single step from its neighbours instead of memorising each in isolation.

A three-session schedule

• Session 1: blocks 1 and 2 (about 40 cards), flipping each card twice.
• Session 2: blocks 3 and 4, then a mixed review of everything marked hard.
• Session 3, two days later: the whole deck shuffled; spaced repetition brings back the terms you hesitated on (usually the Latin cardinal signs and the -plasia family).

If you are on the USMLE track, pair this deck with our USMLE explained guide to see where general pathology sits in Step 1.

Search deck code RI6955 in your Flip It library to start.