April 2018—A semen analysis for viability was collected at 9:30 AM and not received in the laboratory until 1:40 PM. Our standard operating procedure says this test must be analyzed one hour after collection, with no disclaimers stated for late receivables. Therefore, it is my understanding that a specimen received five hours after collection would be considered unacceptable because the viability of the semen is compromised and the collection delivery does not follow our SOP.
Read More »April 2018
TB testing: new approaches to old scourge
April 2018—Scratch the surface of TB testing, and things quickly get interesting. The standard skin reaction test, widely adopted by the early 1940s, is still in use today. The goal has remained steady as well: break the transmission cycle. “From the clinician perspective and the laboratory perspective, because of its infectious nature, we want to identify people with latent tuberculosis,” says Elitza Theel, PhD, lab director for the infectious disease serology laboratory, Mayo Clinic and Mayo Medical Laboratories.
Read More »HBsAg tests, mutation in public health spotlight
April 2018—If you were asked to pick a place on the map where problems with detecting a mutant strain of an infectious disease would likely come to light, the capital of Nebraska might not be your first guess.
Read More »Digital pathology: A 1st anniversary report card
April 2018—Nearly one year after the FDA cleared the Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution for primary diagnosis, Philips is reporting worldwide momentum for the adoption of digital pathology.
Read More »Fewer false-positive pregnancy results with intact hCG
April 2018—When women of childbearing age check in at a cancer center where they might be undergoing medical or surgical treatment, the screening protocol is often to test them for pregnancy, primarily by quantifying serum β-hCG.
Read More »From the President’s Desk: Pathologists as medicine’s first responders
April 2018—The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. The majority of drug overdose deaths involve an opioid, and nearly half of drug overdoses caused by opioids involve prescription drugs.
Read More »LCIS variants and DCIS: tips on telling them apart
April 2018—DCIS or LCIS? Making the distinction can be difficult in some cases. Stuart J. Schnitt, MD, in a session at CAP17 on ancillary testing in breast pathology, delineated the reasons and provided tips, including the role of E-cadherin immunostains to help in this distinction. The cells of DCIS typically show strong membrane staining for E-cadherin while the cells of LCIS are typically E-cadherin negative. But among the tips: If an in situ lesion is E-cadherin positive, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s ductal carcinoma in situ. As he demonstrated in several cases, the lesion could be lobular carcinoma in situ with aberrant E-cadherin immunostaining.
Read More »Turnover in phlebotomy: looking deeper than pay
April 2018—Laboratory managers struggling to reduce turnover among phlebotomists should look beyond the pay and examine their hiring and management practices and the dysfunction that could be creating walls between analytical and preanalytical staff. “It’s an enormous problem,” Dennis J. Ernst, MT(ASCP), NCPT(NCCT), director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, says of phlebotomist turnover. “There’s no silver bullet because there are so many things that lead phlebotomists to give up hope where they work and in the profession. It’s critical that managers are tuned in to the needs of this specialized workforce because they’re varied and many.”
Read More »POC glucose: views on volume, critical care, ACOs
April 2018—Test volume, limitations on devices used in critical care, consolidation, and population health is what CAP TODAY asked about when it spoke in March with the makers of three bedside glucose testing systems. Their systems and those of two other companies are profiled on pages 44-49. “The customers are more aware than ever of the limitations that are in the package inserts from the glucose manufacturers,” says Corrine Fantz, PhD.
Read More »In cervical disease dx, agreement rises with p16 IHC use
April 2018—In analyzing cervical tissue, adjunctive use of p16 IHC with H&E-stained slides improves accuracy and sensitivity, according to the results of the Cervical Tissue Adjunctive Analysis study presented by Thomas C. Wright Jr., MD, in a webinar hosted by CAP TODAY and made possible by an educational grant from Roche Diagnostics.
Read More »Clinical Pathology Abstracts
April 2018—Potential contributors to error in oxygen saturation calculation using a POC assay: Oxygen saturation is important for measuring respiratory status and calculating cardiac output for patients.
Read More »Anatomic Pathology Abstracts
April 2018—Confirmation of ProMisE: a clinical classifier for endometrial cancer; Leiomyoma with bizarre nuclei: a morphological, IHC, and molecular analysis.
Read More »Molecular Pathology Abstracts
April 2018—Effect of inherited TP53 mutations on children with B-cell ALL: TP53 has been referred to as the “guardian of the genome” because it plays a central role in regulation of the cell cycle, DNA repair, and apoptosis, and because somatic mutations in TP53 are frequently identified in many tumor types.
Read More »Newsbytes, 4/18
April 2018—Data-extraction system demonstrates potential for pathology laboratories: Just as parents instill in their children a desire to improve themselves, in part through interactions with others, some software developers are “teaching” their tools to interact and adjust accordingly.
Read More »Put It on the Board, 4/18
April 2018—CMS changes proposed policy on NGS for cancer patients: The CAP and the Association for Molecular Pathology, in separate statements in March, lauded the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for revising its national coverage determination on next-generation sequencing.
Read More »Letters, 4/18
April 2018—Let us bring back breast FNAB: The article “Standardized reporting for breast FNAB cytology” (January 2018) is a welcome account of some of the challenges associated with breast fine needle aspiration biopsy compared with core needle biopsy. The author expertly outlines the significance of a standardized approach to performance, interpretation, and reporting of the breast FNAB procedure. The article was a pleasant surprise because the topic of breast FNAB has not been the subject of much interest in our pathology community during the past several years.
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