Table of Critical Limits in Laboratory Medicine

Critical limits define boundaries of life-threatening values of laboratory test results. Critical results or values are those that fall outside high and low critical limits. Urgent clinician notification of critical results is the lab’s responsibility. The system of critical value reporting was first implemented in a hospital by George D. Lundberg, MD, and first published in MLO in 1972. These tables are based on three national surveys by Gerald J. Kost, MD, PhD, MS, FACB, of the University of California Davis Health System. Adapted with permission from his articles,1-4 the tables summarize critical limits used by 92 responding U.S. medical centers, including 20 trauma centers, and 39 children’s hospitals. Mean and standard deviation (SD) data are presented. The frequency with which critical limits were listed can be found in the original articles.

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Source: ClinicalLaboratoryReference

Use of Tumor Markers in Clinical Practice: Quality Requirements

The National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry

Presents

LABORATORY MEDICINE PRACTICE GUIDELINES

USE OF TUMOR MARKERS IN CLINICAL PRACTICE: QUALITY REQUIREMENTS

These guidelines are intended to encourage more appropriate use of tumor marker tests by primary care physicians, hospital physicians and surgeons, specialist oncologists, and other health care professionals. The background and methodology described within this document represent the larger undertaking to address tumor markers in clinical practice of which this set of guidelines is a part. The recommendations contained herein are based upon the best available evidence and consensus of expert contributors and reviewers. Toward this effort, draft revisions of these guidelines were prepared and placed for comment on the NACB web site. The guideline chapters resulting from this process have been published in appropriate peer-reviewed laboratory medicine and specialty clinical journals to assist with dissemination among the target groups.

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Source: aacc.org

Laboratory Medicine at Curtin University, Australia.

Blood, body tissue and human biology - major parts of a medical scientists' job are an important part of the healthcare system.

Vimiksha Khimji is a laboratory medicine student at Curtin University. She talks about her passion for the field and the career pathway and opportunities available.

Read more: Laboratory Medicine at Curtin University, Australia.

Source: Curtin University

Laboratory Medicine Consultants – Medical Lab Technician

In the declining reimbursements and slower lab results days we are all now facing it has become a great topic of interest for many physicians to talk about opening or starting their own medical laboratory. This is normally met with the next bump in the road which is what all does it take in order to open the laboratory.

Steps to finding a Medical Lab Technician

The first thing to do is to have a business plan. This is where the technical know how has to meet the logical part of the brain. When we look at many business plans that other consultants have put together we understand why they charge such ridiculous rates for them. No one can understand:

1. How to make it happen
2. How to make money once it is in place
3. What the next steps are to completing it
4. What options were not discussed prior to making the plan

Read more: Laboratory Medicine Consultants – Medical Lab Technician

Source: medicallab

Fasting no longer necessary before cholesterol test

For the first time, a team of international experts recommends that most people do not need to fast before having their cholesterol and triglyceride levels tested.

Fasting is a problem for many patients, they explain, and note the latest research shows that cholesterol and triglyceride levels are similar whether people fast or not.

The experts represent the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS) and the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) joint consensus initiative.

They refer to new research from Denmark, Canada, and the United States that included over 300,000 people and found it is not necessary to have an empty stomach to check cholesterol levels.

Apart from Denmark, all countries require that patients fast for at least 8 hours before checking their cholesterol and triglyceride levels - referred to as "lipid profile." In Denmark, non-fasting blood sampling has been in use since 2009.

Read more: Fasting no longer necessary before cholesterol test

Researchers say fasting before a cholesterol test is unnecessary.

Source: medicalnewstoday

Medical Laboratory Technology

A medical laboratory scientist (MLS), also referred to as a clinical laboratory scientist (Honors) or Medical laboratory technologist (Old name for simple Bsc degree holder) is a laboratory based healthcare professional who performs complex chemical, hematological, immunologic, histopathological, cytopathological, microscopic, and bacteriological diagnostic analyses on body fluids such as blood, urine, sputum, stool, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), peritoneal fluid, pericardial fluid, and synovial fluid, as well as other specimens.

Medical laboratory scientists work in clinical laboratories at hospitals, physician's offices, reference labs, biotechnology labs and non-clinical industrial labs.

Video Link: Medical Laboratory Technology

Source: SaskatoonHealthReg

Standardizing Immunoassays: The Benefits of Conformity

Interpreting results of immunoassay-based methods frequently presents a challenge for physicians, especially when caring for patients at multiple institutions that use different assay platforms. For many analytes including tumor markers, endocrine hormones, and cardiac biomarkers, results generated on different platforms are not directly comparable. This is due to the absence of a universally accepted reference material, which manufacturers need to calibrate their assays to a common standard.

Instead, test results must be interpreted using assay-specific reference intervals—a concept that comes naturally to clinical laboratorians but often is foreign to many physicians and patients. This lack of uniform results causes confusion that can adversely affect patient care, particularly when patients are diagnosed at one hospital but pursue follow-up care elsewhere. For example, does an increased CA-125 value at follow-up at a different institution reflect disease progression or simply differences in assay calibration? A lack of standardization also makes it impossible to transfer diagnostic cutoffs from one institution to another unless the assay platforms are identical.

Given the confusion associated with non-standardized assays, why haven’t all immunoassays already been standardized?

Read more: Standardizing Immunoassays: The Benefits of Conformity

Source: alfa