"this is your cancer"

I liked this post from Keith Kaplan on pathtalk.org, "this is your cancer".  About once a year one of Keith's patients visits him and wants to see their slides.  They aren't necessarily pathologists so the images don't necessarily tell them anything specific.  And in most cases, they don't doubt the diagnosis.  Still there is something about seeing your cancer, seeing your enemy, that makes it real.  I am not a pathologist, but if I ever have cancer I would want to see mine.

I'm particularly interested in this because we've been studying the usefulness of digital pathology images for patient communications.  Of course most patients are not able to interpret slides, even less so than they are able to interpret X-rays.  But patients often like having their radiology images and sometimes carry them around with them on a disc.  You can imagine the same thing could happen in future with pathology images.  There is an attraction to the immediacy and sense of control this information gives you, even if you aren't able to interpret it yourself.

What do you think?  Will pathology images be useful to patients?