Medical School Pathology: The Pathophysiology of Tobacco

This video centers tobacco in the Environmental Pathology chapter of Robbins Basic Pathology, as an overview of the mechanisms that contribute to disease and an introduction to the pathologic entities that you will encounter as you progress from general pathology to systems pathology.

Cigarette smoking, in particular, has a HUGE impact on health. Although we usually think about cigarettes in association with lung cancer (and rightly so since 80-90% of lung cancers are linked to cigarette smoking), tobacco is an etiologic factor in multiple malignancies (AML, carcinomas of the kidney, bladder, ureter, pancreas, colon, liver) and many other diseases (e.g., diabetes, fertility issues, ectopic pregnancy, rheumatoid arthritis, cataracts) as well as harm to the fetus.

In this video, I discuss some of the general mechanisms implicated in tobacco-related injury and give a broad overview of some of the entities you will see.