Virtual microscopy for EQAS and quality assurance

Virtual microscopy is an effective tool for external quality assessment schemes (EQAS) / proficiency testing (PT). Labquality uses virtual microscopy in bone marrow morphology and gynaecological cytology schemes.

Welcome to take a closer look at virtual microscopy: http://www.webmicroscope.net/QA/LQtest.asp

http://www.labquality.fi/in_english/

A study shows that virtual microscopy can be also an effective tool for diagnostic quality assurance in colorectal cancer screening programmes, and its accuracy is equivalent to or higher than that of optical microscopy.
Virtual microscopy for histology quality assurance of screen-detected polyps -- Risio et al. 63 (10): 916 -- Journal of Clinical Pathology

Evacuated tubes can lead to an overestimation of red cells in urinanalysis

Preliminary investigation shows that urine collection using evacuated tubes might produce clinically significant overestimation of red blood cells.

Read full article:

Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/CCLM.2010.312?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_dat=cr_pub=pubmed&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org

New Rapid Test for Tuberculosis

A new test identifies positive tuberculosis cases within one hour.

"Researchers at the Health Protection Agency (HPA; London, United Kingdom) developed a new ultra rapid test for the TB bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which substantially increases the sensitivity of the test, enabling detection of the presence of the bacteria in a sample within an hour. The new technique is a single DNA molecule identification test, which uses real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)."

Read full article:

Labmedica - New Test Identifies Positive Tuberculosis Cases Within the Hour

NML Congress 2011 & DEKS Users Meeting

Biomedical Laboratory Science: "The Wondrous Profession"

The Congress will take place in Copenhagen
September 13-15, 2011 at CPH Conference in DGI-BYEN
Registration begins November 1, 2010

The Congress will hold a range of lectures, workshops and poster exhibitions on new subjects from the world of medical laboratory science.

Read more from: http://www.nml2011.dk/uk

Eosinophil cationic protein (ECP) may help in asthma diagnostics

The Internet Journal of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology:
Serum ECP was determined in 139 asthmatic patients by using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and compared to control.
Serum ECP was very highly significant higher (P<0.00001) href="http://bit.ly/cXun5J">Read the full article

CRP is helpful in determining septic joints

The CRP assay was compared with the erythrocyte sedimentation rate to help diagnose patients with septic joints.

Of 163 patients, 72 had inflammatory joints, 44 had septic joints, and 47 were normal. Fifteen admitted to drug use and 43 to alcohol consumption. There were 120 males and 42 females. The mean CRP for septic joints was 13, 8.5 for inflammatory joints, and 6 for normal. The mean ESR for septic joints was 57, 48 for inflammatory joints, and 43 for normal joints.

"CRP is helpful in determining the presence of a septic joint; ESR is not"


Read the abstract from Southern Medical Journal:

Usefulness of CRP and ESR in Predicting Septic Joints : Southern Medical Journal

Glucose level measurement without phlebotomy

Labmedica writes that raman spectroscopy has been used to measure the amount of glucose in the tissue under the skin without the need to perform phlebotomy.
"Raman spectroscopy is a technique used to study vibrational, rotational, and other low-frequency modes in a system. It relies on inelastic scattering of monochromatic light, usually from a laser in the visible, near infrared, or near ultraviolet range".

Read the full article from:

Labmedica - Noninvasive Device Computes Blood Glucose Levels

More information from MIT

Follow ICAAC 2010 Live 12-15 September

Microbe World webpage will broadcast the daily press conferences for the 50th ICAAC (The Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy) being held September 12-15, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Watch live events:
MicrobeWorld - ICAAC 2010 Live

"Westgard Rules" and Multirules

"Everything you ever wanted to know, or possibly didn't want to know, about multirule QC. Multirules are popularly known in the laboratory as "Westgard Rules." Here's the best place to find out more about them."

Westgard QC site has excellent and free materials for medical laboratory internal quality control.

Please visit:
"Westgard Rules" and Multirules - Westgard QC

POINT-OF-CARE Symposium in 10th Baltic Congress in Laboratory Medicine

10th Baltic Congress in Laboratory Medicine in Tallinn in 16-18 September includes several POCT related presentations. Saturday, September 18 there are four round table POCT presentations and one commercial presentation by Labquality.

View the scientific program from www.congress.ee

Finally an alternative to warfarin?

The Lancet: "The benefits of 150 mg dabigatran at reducing stroke, 110 mg dabigatran at reducing bleeding, and both doses at reducing intracranial bleeding versus warfarin were consistent irrespective of centres' quality of INR control. For all vascular events, non-haemorrhagic events, and mortality, advantages of dabigatran were greater at sites with poor INR control than at those with good INR control. Overall, these results show that local standards of care affect the benefits of use of new treatment alternatives."

Read the full article from Lancet:
Efficacy and safety of dabigatran compared with warfarin at different levels of international normalised ratio control for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation: an analysis of the RE-LY trial : The Lancet

Automation can help to reduce errors in specimen collection

Sunquest Information systems says that patient safety can be improved by automating specimen collection and transfusion management.
"Adding specimen collection management and transfusion management solutions to the
laboratory information system (LIS) promotes patient safety by ensuring that specimens are
collected from the right patient, for the right tests, at the right time, with the right indicators, for
the right diagnosis."

Read the full article:
Sunquest: Improving Patient Safety

Labquality Days 2011

First announcement

Labquality Days 2011 will be held on 10 – 11 February 2011 in the Helsinki Fair Centre. In 2011 Labquality will celebrate its 40th anniversary of starting operations, and this is reflected in plans for these Labquality Days and the programme. The congress languages will be Finnish and English.

Labquality Days are for all medical laboratory professionals including users of point-of-care tests, laboratory researchers and students.

Labqualty Days website