1,720,976 research outputs found
Total quality in laboratory diagnostics. It’s time to think outside the box.
No full textTotal quality in laboratory diagnostics. It’s time to think outside the box
Preanalytical phase--a continuous challenge for laboratory professionals.
No full textPreanalytical phase is the most vulnerable part of the total testing process and is considered to be among the greatest challenges to the laboratory professionals. However, preanalytical activities, management of unsuitable specimens and reporting policies are not fully standardized, nor harmonized worldwide. Several standards related to blood sampling and sample transportation and handling are available, but compliance to those guidelines is low, especially outside the laboratory and if blood sampling is done without the direct supervision of the laboratory staff. Furthermore, for some most critical procedures within the preanalytical phase, internationally accepted guidelines and recommendations as well as related quality measures are unfortunately unavailable. There is large heterogeneity in the criteria for sample rejection, the different strategies by which unacceptable samples are managed, processed and test results reported worldwide. Management of unacceptable specimens warrants therefore immediate harmonization. Alongside the challenging and long road of patient safety, preanalytical phase offers room for improvement, and Editors at Biochemia Medica Journal definitely hope to continue providing a respective mean for reporting studies on different preanalytical phase topics. With pleasure and delight we invite potential future authors to submit their articles examining the quality of various preanalytical activities to Biochemia Medica. We will keep nurturing this topic as our prominent feature and by this we hope to be able to deliver valid evidence for some future guidelines and recommendations
Overview on patient safety in healthcare and laboratory diagnostics.
No full textOverview on patient safety in healthcare and laboratory diagnostics
Hemolysis detection and management of hemolyzed specimens.
No full textAssay interferences have long been underestimated and unfortunately too of ten undetected in the daily clinical laboratory practice. The extra-analytical phase of the laboratory testing process has been recognized as the major source of laboratory errors over the past decade. Preanalytical errors are most common errors within the total testing process and hemolysis is recognized as one of the most prevalent preanalytical errors and surely the most prevalent interference inclinical laboratory testing. Visual detection of hemolysis is arbitrary and therefore mostly unreliable since it may over-and underestimate the actual prevalence of hemolyzed serum specimens(i.e.,trained observers are unable to accurately rank the degree of interference in serum). Elevated concentration of bilirubin may further impair the ability to detect hemolysis by visual inspection and therefore lead to serious underestimation of hemolysis in neonatal samples where elevated bilirubin concentration is commonplace. The recent advances in laboratory technology have lead to an increasing trend in the automation of various preanalytical processes into large preanalytical modules. Such modules as well as novel automated laboratory analyzers offer the automated detection of serum indices. This is advantageous due to the increased reproducibility and the improvement indetection of mildly hemolyzed specimens(serum hemoglobin <0.6g/L). These platforms commonly use the semiquantitative spectrophotometric measurement and grade interfering substances into several categories. However, various analytical plat-forms may have different decision thresholds for various serum indices. Moreover,different systems might be different in their assay parameters and the degree of the interference of the specific interfering substance. Therefore, more efforts should be focused to standardize the mean of reporting the hemolysis index, especially when this important parameter is used for obtaining meaningful information on the quality of sample collection throughout collection centers and wards. Hemolysis is still one of the biggest challenges to the laboratory specialists. In case of hemolysis, laboratory personnel should always ask for new sample(s). In case new sample(s)cannot be obtained, it is the responsibility of the laboratory specialist to communicate the problem with the physician responsible for the patient and seek for the solution to the best of the patient care
Standardization of collection requirements for fasting samples: For the Working Group on Preanalytical Phase (WG-PA) of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM).
No full textStandardized protocols for patient preparation for laboratory testing are currently lacking. Moreover, a great heterogeneity exists in the definitions of "fasting" currently being used among healthcare workers and in the literature. Marked metabolic and hormonal changes occur after food ingestion, mainly due to the absorption of fluids, lipids, proteins, carbohydrates and other food constituents. This postprandial response varies markedly in response to numerous factors, such as eating behavior, food composition, fasting duration, time of the day, chronic and acute smoking, coffee and alcohol consumption. It is therefore crucial to minimize the total variability by controlling as many of these modifying factors as possible. Control of the abovementioned effects on postprandial response can only be achieved by standardizing the way patients are prepared for laboratory testing, i.e. by defining the fasting duration, as well as what is and what is not allowed (e.g., coffee, tea, smoking, water) during the period of fasting prior to sample collection. The aim of this article is to describe the range of effects of different approaches to fasting on laboratory tests, and to provide a framework for the harmonization of definitions for fasting requirements for laboratory tests
Phlebotomy, stat testing and laboratory organization: an intriguing relationship.
No full textPhlebotomy, stat testing and laboratory organization: an intriguing relationship
Colour coding for blood collection tube closures - a call for harmonisation.
No full textAt least one in 10 patients experience adverse events while receiving hospital care. Many of the errors are related to laboratory diagnostics. Efforts to reduce laboratory errors over recent decades have primarily focused on the measurement process while pre- and post-analytical errors including errors in sampling, reporting and decision-making have received much less attention. Proper sampling and additives to the samples are essential. Tubes and additives are identified not only in writing on the tubes but also by the colour of the tube closures. Unfortunately these colours have not been standardised, running the risk of error when tubes from one manufacturer are replaced by the tubes from another manufacturer that use different colour coding. EFLM therefore supports the worldwide harmonisation of the colour coding for blood collection tube closures and labels in order to reduce the risk of pre-analytical errors and improve the patient safety
Albumin Benkovac (c.1175 A > G; p.Glu392Gly): a novel genetic variant of human serum albumin.
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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