Molecular Pathology Selected Abstracts, 12/14
Editors: Donna E. Hansel, MD, PhD, chief, Division of Anatomic Pathology, and professor, Department of Pathology, University of California, San Diego; John A. Thorson, MD, PhD, associate professor of...
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From tumor board, an integrated diagnostic report
Karen Titus December 2014—The handling of molecular information bears a certain resemblance to Wall Street’s bundling of mortgages in recent years. You can slice ’em, dice ’em, and repackage them in...
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Standardization of biospecimen collection using biospecimen kits
December 2014—Following is one section of the chapter, “Flow of Biospecimens: From the Clinic or Operating Room To and From the Biospecimen Repository,” in the new CAP Press book titled Developing and...
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Biorepository book helps programs follow guidelines
Bridget Kuehn December 2014—Securing financial support and setting up a quality management program are two of the biggest challenges to creating a successful biospecimen repository, says Nilsa C....
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Amid Ebola preparation, an EV-D68 outbreak
Karen Lusky Labs ramp up for Ebola patients, specimens December 2014—In addition to preparing for Ebola patients, many clinical laboratories and hospitals in recent months faced outbreaks of...
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From the President’s Desk: Are we there yet?, 12/14
Gene N. Herbek, MD December 2014—At this time of year, when we are inclined to reminisce, I often recall holiday travel with small children. I mention this to explain my headline—an existential...
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Study: elevated vancomycin MICs no cause for concern
Ann Griswold, PhD December 2014—Elevated vancomycin minimum inhibitory concentrations do not increase the risk of death in patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, according to the findings of a...
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Anemia: classification challenge and clinical questions
Karen Titus December 2014—Anemia is in the eye of the classifier. While that’s not as elegant as the “beauty-beholder” saying, it’s much more important. To be able to effectively treat and diagnose...
View Article32 analyzers in focus, from menu to special features
Access interactive guide December 2014—Two new analyzers and a new workcell automation solution are in this year’s product guide to hematology analyzers. Sysmex’s newest offering is its XN-1000 R...
View ArticleQ & A Column, 9/14
September 2014—Occasionally on certain patients, when we draw for a CBC in the early morning, we get a low Hgb of 6 or 7 g/dL. We draw the same patient for a CBC in the afternoon and we get a higher...
View ArticlePut It on the Board, 9/14
September 2014—Simple blood tests, colossal contrasts on price: California hospitals have a pricing range for common blood tests so wide that it brings to mind the vast span of that state’s world...
View ArticleFlu view—tests, predictions for the upcoming season
October 2014—Whether exotic influenza viruses will surface this winter remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: The coming season will pack a punch in terms of promising diagnostics and forecasting...
View Article21 honored for patient care, strategy, safety, and service
October 2014—Stanley J. Robboy, MD, was presented Sept. 7 with the Pathologist of the Year award during an evening event at the CAP ’14 annual meeting in Chicago. At the same event, at the Hyatt...
View ArticleMolecular tumor boards: fixture or fad?
October 2014—Along with everything else the genomics revolution has wrought, there’s this: Molecular testing is threatening to turn medicine into an ongoing episode of “Hoarders.” So much information...
View ArticleMolecular Pathology Selected Abstracts, 10/14
October 2014—A gene panel to examine mosaic somatic mutations in cerebral malformations: Somatic mutations are widely recognized in cancer, often affecting prognosis and determining candidacy for use...
View ArticleNewsbytes, 10/14
October 2014—A conundrum: teaching pathology informatics to residents: Just as high schoolers are prone to protest, “We’re never going to need to use quadratic equations/literary theory/the periodic...
View ArticleAnatomic Pathology Selected Abstracts, 10/14
October 2014—Role of STAT6 immunohistochemistry in diagnosis of solitary fibrous tumors: Solitary fibrous tumor is an uncommon fibroblastic neoplasm. Although histologic characteristics and frequent...
View ArticlePut It on the Board, 10/14
October 2014—Leading pathologists and the CAP are encouraging laboratory professionals to use the social media website Twitter as a way to amplify lab medicine’s voice among clinicians, policymakers,...
View ArticleIn free CytoAtlas app, 750 images for 100+ diagnoses
October 2014—Like many cytopathology trainees, Charanjeet Singh, MD, who recently completed a cytopathology fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, found it challenging at times to find...
View ArticleIn lab QC, how much room for improvement?
October 2014—The debut of the CMS’ new quality control option, IQCP, has sharpened the focus on QC in the laboratory and raised hopes that risk management concepts can make QC more robust. But one of...
View ArticleAABB ramps up donor screening to help stem TRALI
October 2014—When it comes to the blood supply, the tradeoffs between safety and availability are a tightrope that blood centers walk with extreme care. For several years now, TRALI...
View ArticleClinical Pathology Selected Abstracts, 10/14
October 2014—Benefits of green tea extract to brain connectivity during working memory processing: Green tea extract or its main ingredient has been shown to have a beneficial impact on cognitive...
View ArticleBlood bank systems sport an assortment of solutions
October 2014—From a focus on donor screening to inroads with inventory and tweaks to transfusion functionality, marketers of blood bank information systems and ancillary solutions continue to make...
View ArticleQ & A Column, 10/14
October 2014—My laboratory reports the color of a body fluid after it’s spun down. So bloody fluid may be reported as “color: yellow, appearance = bloody.” Is this common practice? We have had phone...
View ArticleFrom the President’s Desk: Building a quality tradition, 10/14
October 2014—Laboratory medicine is a human endeavor with zero tolerance for error. “Human endeavor” and “zero error” make for an awkward pairing, but those are the rules and they’re good ones. So we...
View ArticleFDA’s LDT proposal means ‘whole new ballgame’ for labs
October 2014—The Food and Drug Administration’s plan to subject many laboratory-developed tests to a new layer of regulatory requirements over the course of the next decade is drawing sharply...
View ArticleNGS bioinformatics pipeline—worries and wish lists: A look at the...
October 2014—Last month the molecular and genomic pathology laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center posted on the AMP listserv its requirements for a bioinformatics scientist to...
View ArticleQ & A column, 11/14
November 2014—When performing a platelet count from a blood sample collected in a sodium citrate tube, the result is multiplied by 1.1 to correct for the volumetric difference in anticoagulant compared...
View ArticleFrom the President’s Desk: How we tell our story, 11/14
November 2014—We do what we do because we know it’s important, we find it engaging, and we like to keep things interesting. We are committed to our work and precise by nature. So we spend hours with...
View ArticleFrom chaos to order—and compassion—in autopsies
November 2014—Pathology resident Beth Ellen Frost, DO, has at times taken an uncommon step to put family members at ease when they are asked to consent, or have consented, to an autopsy for a loved...
View ArticleCAP proposals on IHC, PQRS accepted for Medicare in ’15
November 2014—The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Oct. 31 published its 2015 Medicare physician fee schedule to set payment rates and policy for the next year, including the relative...
View ArticleIs molecular AP testing in sync with guidelines?
November 2014—Molecular testing, on a steep growth curve in anatomic pathology, is increasingly providing decisive guidance for treatment of cancer patients. But while guidelines on clinical relevance...
View ArticleNGS informatics catching up to clinical demands
November 2014—When Birgit H. Funke, PhD, gave a talk earlier this year on incorporating bioinformatic tools and pipelines into medical NGS, at Molecular Medicine Tri-Con 2014, one of her slides showed...
View ArticleHow LIS tweaks can enhance efficiency, patient safety
November 2014—So, you have a great idea that will improve laboratory workflow and reduce errors? Chances are the change will depend on automation of some sort, and will involve the LIS. But upgrades to...
View ArticleMolecular techniques in a case of concurrent BCR-ABL1–positive CML and CMML
November 2014—CAP TODAY and the Association for Molecular Pathology have teamed up to bring molecular case reports to CAP TODAY readers. Here, this month, is case No. 6. (See the February, August, and...
View ArticleBig gain theory—data warehousing pays off
November 2014—It’s been said that “data” is the plural of “anecdote,” and debate has swirled around whether that is true. Something about data makes most of us feel that it is qualitatively different:...
View ArticleClinical Pathology Selected Abstracts, 11/14
November 2014—Combination of blood tests for fibrosis and cirrhosis to assess liver prognosis in CHC: Newer therapies for chronic hepatitis C are promising due to a high rate of sustained viral...
View ArticleAnatomic Pathology Selected Abstracts, 11/14
November 2014—Final trial report of sentinel-node biopsy versus nodal observation in melanoma: Sentinel-node biopsy, a minimally invasive procedure for regional melanoma staging, was evaluated in a...
View ArticleNewsbytes, 11/14
November 2014—Software expands on ‘what you see is what you get’; ONC unveils tool for sharing health information with patients; Portal gives patients direct access to lab test results; Xifin partners...
View ArticleMolecular Pathology Selected Abstracts, 11/14
November 2014—Whole exome sequencing of Merkel cell carcinoma demonstrates conserved retinoblastoma pathway dysregulation: Merkel cell carcinoma is a rare aggressive neuroendocrine malignancy of the...
View ArticlePut It on the Board, 11/14
November 2014—Amid initial confusion over Ebola-related safety protocols for health professionals providing direct patient care, laboratory professionals report hearing a consistent message from the...
View ArticleLabs ramp up for Ebola patients, specimens
December 2014—Clinical laboratories have made impressive headway in their Ebola preparedness, though their plans are shaping up in different ways. That’s due, in part, to varying opinions about how to...
View ArticleAnatomic Pathology Selected Abstracts, 12/14
December 2014—Value of autopsies in the era of high-tech medicine: Although the autopsy is still the gold standard for quality assessment of clinical diagnoses, autopsy rates have declined to less than...
View ArticleClinical Pathology Selected Abstracts, 12/14
December 2014—Prevalence of antimicrobial use in U.S. acute care hospitals: Inappropriate antimicrobial drug use is associated with adverse events in hospitalized patients as well as the emergence of...
View ArticlePut It on the Board, 12/14
December 2014—Crizotinib shrinks tumors in ROS1-positive NSCLC: A recently published New England Journal of Medicine study that shows promise for the treatment of ROS1-positive lung cancer patients...
View ArticleQ&A column, 12/14
December 2014—What are the legal ramifications for medical technologists or medical laboratory technicians if they release results on suboptimal specimens on the insistence of physicians? What are the...
View ArticleNewsbytes, 12/14
December 2014—Why lab report formatting remains a work in progress: As a guiding principle, “form follows function” may be as appropriate for pathology reports as it was for 20th century architecture...
View ArticleFull speed ahead through tight corners
December 2014—Like sailing ships, laboratories hope for fair winds as they chart their business plans. But smooth sailing is never a sure bet; rough sea conditions are an ever-present possibility that...
View ArticleMassive transfusion: a question of timing, detail, a golden ratio
December 2014—Here it was, the kind of massive postpartum hemorrhage case for which the team at Duke University Medical Center had spent months preparing. The multidisciplinary group had agreed on...
View ArticleLetters, 11/14
November 2014—We read with great interest the two recent articles by William Check, PhD, highlighting primary HPV testing proposals (June and September 2014). Additional related information not covered...
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