General Information

Hello, I wanted to see what everyone’s process was like for their 6-month AMR testing for chemistry/ia. Since CAP requires linearity testing of low, mid, and high of the AmR, does anyone use vendor calibrators or purchasing linearity material (this costs thousands of dollars). For a lab that tests 100+ tests , this is extremely expensive and tedious to do every 6 months. Looking for any effective way to improve this process. Thanks. near to our linearity. I am hoping to use Roche Calibrators. But there are only a handful that have a 3-pt calibration. Do your customers have a similar process for their linearity testing? low, mid and high range that is near to our li…

Which Analytes must have calibration linearity performed. The one with less than 3 calibrators or more than 3 calibration points

Any of my fellow lab rats familiar with the JSBL Nattokinase assay?

We are looking at Rubella latex kits. We were using the Sure-Vue select kit and liked that kit but they have stopped making this one. We have looked at the Cardinal health, ASI and Sure-Vue Rubella latex kits. All 3 of these have the same method and we would have to test all samples and the weak reactive control with a 1:10 dilution. I cannot get the weak reactive control to work well on these using the 1:10 dilution. The next step is to test it at a 1:5 dilution and I cannot get that to work well either. Does anyone have any experience with these kits? If so, have you had any issues like this? Does anyone use any other latex kits that work well? Thanks

Hello, We are going to be moving forward with testing cord blood gases. We currently run venous gases and arterial gases on our ABL 800 series. Now since a cord gas is still technically a blood specimen, does this require a new set of validation? We are not running reference ranges with this, so I don't know if that would make a difference. Thanks for any input.

We are looking for any suggestions on how to quantify urine epi cells. How do you determine the numerical range for reporting rare, few, moderate, many?

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Does anyone have a policy to share on delta check intervals? In our system (meditech) we have the hours set pretty far back and it stops outpatients for ridiculous things like a1c% and differential values and various chemistries. Personally I think delta checking differentials at all is a bit worthless, particularly on an outpatient whose last value was a week or two ago. And nearly daily at least a few inpatients will have differential delta checks. I'd like to whittle down our delta checks to try to make them actually helpful and optimize our TAT with more autoreleased results.

From a regulatory standpoint, can a hospital lab also perform testing on animal samples?

I'm curious on how many labs only perform the dipstick on a routine urinalysis and if there is a positive protein, nitrite, leukocyte esterase or blood then reflex to a microscopic?

Hello all - I wonder if anyone has experience with bringing MLS/MT staff to your labs using the H1b Visa sponsorship route. The paralegal at my organization is asking me to justify the needs for a bachelor's degree for each of the job components listed in our job description for the MT/MLS role. Did you need to do this as well and if so, we can talk to see how you were able to justify? Thanks!

Now that Lipoclear has been discontinued, I am struggling to find a suitable substitute for our lipemic specimens. We are trying Cleanascite but are not having much luck with it. What are other laboratories trying?

Hi, I have been a tech since 1985. I first received my Associates Degree as an MLT, then a few years later received my Bachelor's Degree in General Studies (1993). With my experience and taking the classes required by ASCP, I obtained my MT certification through ASCP. For the past 27 years I've worked in various lead and supervisor positions and it has never been an issue for me to do competencies. Last year I was told the new CAP requirement is anyone doing competencies must have a Bachelor's of Science to do moderate complexity competencies, however, I could do high complexity competencies with my education. How does that even make sense? I have man…

Hello, I’m in the autoimmune sector and would like to found out from anyone who can share their Proficiency Testing Policy that includes providing evidence of compliance in reviewing Ungraded PT results . Since we perform specialized testing , we don’t have enough labs to compare our answers with. I’m updating our PT policy to address this requirement. I appreciate any assistance I can get. Thank you . Stay safe everyone 😷

I was wondering what protocols others are using for urine culture screening. Currently we have two ways to order a UA: Urinalysis, and Urinalysis w Screen for Culture. (We also have a straight urine C&S order -- we just do those without scrteening. If the latter is ordered, we look at the following from a UA: Esterase, Nitrite, and on microscopic: WBCs, and Yeast and/or bacteria. If any of these four things is positive or present, we do a C&S. If they are all negative, we cancel the C&S as "void per protocol". Almost all of our UA orders now are Urinalysis w Screen for Culture. The presence of bacteria (or something that looks like bacteria) …

Has anyone changed their PPE requirements for handling COVID 19 patient specimens?

Does anyone have a PM sheet for the Clinitek Advantus they would be willing to share? My new facility does not have a PM sheet and we need to have one. However I can't seem to locate one from Siemens.

As the new generation comes into the workforce I am seeing issues with critical thinking. Does anybody have any suggestions for education to critical thinking? A presentation? A good class to attend?

Hi All, Does anyone out there have a critical value for CPK (Creatine Phosphokinase)????? If so, what is your cut off value? We do not currently have a critical value for this test, but our medical director was asked by a specialist to consider a cut off of 2000mg/dL where he considers that a very high abnormal for patients he typically sees. However, we do orthopedic surgery here and do not think this is a good place to start, if we add this at all. Any thoughts would be very appreciated!!!!! Linda

Has anyone found a QC material to use with the K-check tablet? we are currently using urine controls but the bulk of our ketone testing is on serum. Bio-Rad makes one for use on some chemistry analyzer but when I talked to them about it they said it was unsuitable for the K-check tablet stating that it made a speckled pattern on the tablet rather than the solid purple a positive patient would leave. JCAHO seems to be concerned about "matrix" as we found out 20 years ago when we were only using urine controls for pregnancy kit tests. Thanks

Anyone using Radiometer's Aqure Xpress? If so, how much does it cost? i assume it's a yearly fee. If anyone uses the full version I'd like to know if handles glucometers as well. And how much it is.

Hi Everyone, Wanted to see how other labs are handling education of Biotin interference to physicians. I am looking at putting a canned comment on all tests that can be affected by high levels of Biotin ingestion - wanted to see if anyone has done this yet and what comment they are using. Thanks.

We are trying to set up a new lot of QC for our Dimension EXL 200. We also use LabLink to evaluate our QC. Last time we set up the new lot, there were issues with it crossing over due to it not being set up correctly on the Dimension. How do I set it up in the Dimension so that it will cross over into LabLink into new lot, not the old?

I was just tasked with adding anion gap to our panels. I know there are a couple of calculations and wanted to know is one calculation better than the other? Na-CL-HC03= anion gap or Na +K - CL- HCO3= anion gap. I know that the reference ranges will be a little different between the 2 calculations, also are there any correction factors based on the albumin or phosphate results? Or is it just up to the physicians on which on to use and add a notation to the results about the impact that a low albumin could have on the results? Thanks

We have recently moved our testing to new Ortho analyzers. To get the result reported out as "Neonatal Bilirubin", the new analyzer measures total bili (82247) and direct bili (82248). Then a calculation is made with those results, conjugated and unconjugated bili and a delta bili to produce the neonatal bili result. We were told to report the end result using code 82247. Does anyone know if that is correct?