June 2015—More than 11,000 dead of Ebola virus disease in Africa; measles recurring in the United States after a 15-year hiatus; 40 million poultry dead from bird flu or culled in the hope of containing it. The world gets smaller, the agents stay strong, the zoonotic threats multiply. Anticipating and managing such challenges is an important part of laboratory leadership.
Read More »June 2015
AKI risk biomarkers may be ‘as early as it gets’
June 2015—Last fall, the FDA cleared Astute Medical’s NephroCheck to pinpoint critically ill adults likely to manifest moderate to severe acute kidney injury within 12 hours. The urine biomarker test’s investigators believe NephroCheck will give clinicians the early warning signs they need to head off impending cases of AKI, though it remains to be seen whether that hoped-for prevention will bear out in clinical outcomes studies. One important laboratory hurdle to widespread use of the test is that it is performed on a countertop instrument separate from the automated line used for all other urinalyses.
Read More »Coexisting germline mutations in APC and BRCA2 in a patient with colon cancer
June 2015—Tumor suppressor genes direct the production of proteins that regulate cell division. Mutations in these genes result in uncontrolled cell growth and may contribute to the development of a cancer. Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) and breast cancer 2 (BRCA2) are two such genes.
Read More »Anatomic Pathology Selected Abstracts, 6/15
June 2015—Safety and diagnostic accuracy of tumor biopsies in children with cancer; Napsin A as a specific marker for ovarian clear cell adenocarcinoma; Long-term follow-up of an active surveillance cohort of patients with prostate cancer; Primary sources of pelvic serous cancer in patients with endometrial intraepithelial carcinoma; Re-evaluating the role of sentinel lymph node biopsy in microinvasive breast carcinoma; Molecular analyses of six types of uterine smooth muscle tumors
Read More »Clinical Pathology Selected Abstracts, 6/15
June 2015—Effects of red cell storage duration on patients undergoing cardiac surgery: Patients who undergo cardiac surgery often receive multiple units of red blood cells and may be at risk for end-organ injury because of compromised cardiac output or a proinflammatory state that follows cardiopulmonary bypass. At least one large study has shown an increase in adverse outcomes in patients receiving RBCs stored longer than 14 days compared with those receiving RBCs stored less than 14 days.
Read More »Molecular Pathology Selected Abstracts, 6/15
June 2015—Expanding the application of RNA technology: potential for enhanced diagnostics: Technical applications using RNA technology have been limited in scope due to the inability to selectively label specific nucleotides within an RNA molecule.
Read More »Visuals to the fore in new histology labeling guideline
June 2015—Like laboratorians, filmmakers split their workflow into three phases. In film, they are pre-production, production, and post-production. When flubs occur on a movie set, “We’ll fix it in post,” often said sardonically, is the fallback game plan to keep things on schedule and use visual and sound effects to cover up mistakes.
Read More »Put It on the Board, 6/15
June 2015—Keep close eye on payments to physicians; NIST releases first ‘genome in a bottle’; For blood supply safety, time for technology mandate; CE for NSCLC liquid biopsy; Siemens launches handheld coagulation analyzer
Read More »RFID keeps lab’s supplies on hand, just in time
June 2015—Sharon Cox, MT(ASCP)SM, has a passion for the correct count. Charged with managing the laboratory supply inventory as core lab supervisor at Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa, Okla., she knows the right tally matters. Get it wrong and the lab can wind up with too little of what is needed. That can mean big overnight shipping charges when things run out unexpectedly. To avoid that outcome, the lab may order more supply than necessary, which leads to a different kind of problem.
Read More »Q&A column, 6/15
June 2015—Can IgA-deficient patients who require transfusion receive blood only from donors who are also IgA deficient? Patients who are IgA deficient and do not have a history of a prior anaphylactic transfusion reaction ...
Read More »Newsbytes, 6/15
June 2015—Consortium gaining ground in quest for interoperability; Xifin purchases VisualShare; CDC releases update on electronic lab result reporting to public health agencies; Enzo Life Sciences releases ELISA plate reader app; Orchard Software features white papers on website; Imprivata expands reach with acquisition of HT Systems; Sampleminded teams up with Exact Sciences
Read More »For viral diagnosis, metagenomic NGS
June 2015—A 20-year-old woman who had returned to the U.S. after two months of hiking in Western Australia presented with three days of acute febrile illness—fever, rash, headache, nausea, and muscle and joint pain. Testing for common infectious causes of acute febrile illness, including Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, and human immunodeficiency virus, all turned up negative. While the woman was in Australia, she had been warned about an ongoing outbreak of an exotic alphavirus, Ross River virus, in the region where she was hiking.
Read More »Upper-echelon QA through Accuracy-Based Programs
June 2015—HbA1c, creatinine, testosterone, vitamin D, lipids, and maybe albumin. If you know what the common thread is among these analytes, then you may be familiar with the CAP’s Accuracy-Based Programs and their evolution over the past couple of decades.
Read More »New guideline spells out IPMN essentials
June 2015—It was a call he dreaded making. It was the late 1990s. Volkan Adsay, MD, was following up on a former patient who had been diagnosed eight years earlier with pancreatic cancer, one related to an intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm. The patient’s medical record noted that despite chemotherapy, the prognosis was grim.
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