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Microbiology: Petridish #fun#lab#
Source: Mulpix via I love microbiology
Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine
Monday, November 7, 2016
Petri dish paintings
Some fun for medical laboratory scientists
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Microbiology: Petridish #fun#lab#
Source: Mulpix via I love microbiology
Read more:
Microbiology: Petridish #fun#lab#
Source: Mulpix via I love microbiology
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Monday gloves
Theory and reality hardly ever meet on Monday mornings
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Biomedicina Padrão
Source: Facebook via Biomedicina Padrao
Read more:
Biomedicina Padrão
Source: Facebook via Biomedicina Padrao
What a virus actually look like
Beautiful infographic about viruses
Original image:
What a virus actually look like
Source: Reddid via tabletopwhale.com
Original image:
What a virus actually look like
Source: Reddid via tabletopwhale.com
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Laboratory’s role in healthcare quality
Healthcare providers depend on accurate and precise lab results in order to do their jobs well and give patients the best possible care. Often, laboratory results are the decision point in a patient’s treatment. With so much on the line, it’s no surprise that laboratories everywhere are committed to constant improvement.
USA is having Healthcare Quality Week in October. This week is designated to celebrate and acknowledge the work of healthcare quality professionals perform all year round. Quality professionals address many issues in the healthcare workplace including risk management, patient safety, and quality improvement.
Let’s have a closer look at some of the ways that laboratories contribute to patient safety and healthcare quality every day:
The Laboratory’s Central Role in Healthcare Quality
Source: LabTestingMatters
Image: Lego
USA is having Healthcare Quality Week in October. This week is designated to celebrate and acknowledge the work of healthcare quality professionals perform all year round. Quality professionals address many issues in the healthcare workplace including risk management, patient safety, and quality improvement.
Let’s have a closer look at some of the ways that laboratories contribute to patient safety and healthcare quality every day:
- Quality control
- External quality assessment (Proficiency testing)
- Specially trained personnel
- Top level documentation
- Internal audits
The Laboratory’s Central Role in Healthcare Quality
Source: LabTestingMattersImage: Lego
CML Cookies
Beautiful blood cell cookies by Kristine Krafts
Here we have a neutrophilic leukocytosis with a left shift (there’s a myelocyte, top left, a metamyelocyte, bottom left, and a promyelocyte, center) and a basophilia (right). Check out how mature the chromatin is in the myelocyte, metamyelocyte, and segmented neutrophil – but how fine it is (you can even see nucleoli!) in the promyelocyte). Also, the granules in the promyelocyte are in the cytoplasm and over the nucleus as well. The basophil granules are kinda obscuring the nucleus, but that’s what happens in real life, so we’ll call it artistic rendering.
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Blood cookies! - Pathology student
Source: Pathology student
Image credits: Kristine Krafts, M.D.
Here we have a neutrophilic leukocytosis with a left shift (there’s a myelocyte, top left, a metamyelocyte, bottom left, and a promyelocyte, center) and a basophilia (right). Check out how mature the chromatin is in the myelocyte, metamyelocyte, and segmented neutrophil – but how fine it is (you can even see nucleoli!) in the promyelocyte). Also, the granules in the promyelocyte are in the cytoplasm and over the nucleus as well. The basophil granules are kinda obscuring the nucleus, but that’s what happens in real life, so we’ll call it artistic rendering.
Read more
Blood cookies! - Pathology student
Image credits: Kristine Krafts, M.D.
Candida auris - New superbug in US
Just five months after federal health officials asked hospitals and physicians to be on the lookout for an often-fatal, antibiotic-resistant fungus called Candida auris, 13 cases have been reported, the CDC announced 4 November, 2016.
It is the first time that the fungus, which is easily misidentified in lab tests as a more common candida yeast infection, has been found in the USA, and four of the first seven patients with it have died.
Candida auris’s emergence and apparent global spread, it was first identified in Japan in 2009 and since then has been found in a dozen countries on four continents, put the pathogen on the ever-growing list of superbugs, disease-causing microbes that are resistant to many and, in some cases, all antibiotics.
C. auris is difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods and can be misidentified in labs without specific technology. CDC encourages all U.S. laboratory staff who identify C. auris strains to notify their state or local public health authorities and CDC at candidaauris@cdc.gov. Find answers to frequently asked questions about C. auris on our questions and answers page and in the Candida auris: Interim Recommendations.
Read more:
Health officials find first cases of new superbug in USMore information:
Candida auris | Fungal Diseases | CDC
Source: CDC
It is the first time that the fungus, which is easily misidentified in lab tests as a more common candida yeast infection, has been found in the USA, and four of the first seven patients with it have died.
Candida auris’s emergence and apparent global spread, it was first identified in Japan in 2009 and since then has been found in a dozen countries on four continents, put the pathogen on the ever-growing list of superbugs, disease-causing microbes that are resistant to many and, in some cases, all antibiotics.
C. auris is difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods and can be misidentified in labs without specific technology. CDC encourages all U.S. laboratory staff who identify C. auris strains to notify their state or local public health authorities and CDC at candidaauris@cdc.gov. Find answers to frequently asked questions about C. auris on our questions and answers page and in the Candida auris: Interim Recommendations.
Read more:
Health officials find first cases of new superbug in USMore information:
Candida auris | Fungal Diseases | CDC
Source: CDC
Friday, November 4, 2016
A lot of blood, for no reason?
Curbing genetic testing for clot-prone patients is just one example of how to improve spending of health care dollars through better ordering of tests. A half billion dollars, at least, gets spent each year on blood tests to see which hospital patients have a genetic quirk that makes their blood more likely to form dangerous clots.
Writing in the Journal of Hospital Medicine , they review what’s known about testing for the trait called inherited thrombophilia, and call for a drastic cut in the test’s use by doctors across America.
After all, they write, hospitalized people who have already had such dangerous clots, called venous thromboembolisms or VTEs, don’t need a positive genetic test to justify taking medication and making other changes to prevent future ones.
And there’s no evidence that medication to prevent clots will help hospital patients who haven’t yet had a VTE. Testing their DNA for inherited thrombophilia won’t change that.
In other words, the authors say, ordering inherited thromboembolism testing on inpatients is something doctors do for little or no reason. And according to the team’s analysis of data pulled from medical records, they do it hundreds of thousands of times a year in Medicare patients alone.
Can we call this predictive, preventive and personalised laboratory medicine?
Read more:
A lot of blood, for no reason? U-M team concludes that common, costly clot test has few benefits | University of Michigan Health System
Source: University of Michigan Health System
Writing in the Journal of Hospital Medicine , they review what’s known about testing for the trait called inherited thrombophilia, and call for a drastic cut in the test’s use by doctors across America.
After all, they write, hospitalized people who have already had such dangerous clots, called venous thromboembolisms or VTEs, don’t need a positive genetic test to justify taking medication and making other changes to prevent future ones.
And there’s no evidence that medication to prevent clots will help hospital patients who haven’t yet had a VTE. Testing their DNA for inherited thrombophilia won’t change that.
In other words, the authors say, ordering inherited thromboembolism testing on inpatients is something doctors do for little or no reason. And according to the team’s analysis of data pulled from medical records, they do it hundreds of thousands of times a year in Medicare patients alone.
Can we call this predictive, preventive and personalised laboratory medicine?
Read more:
A lot of blood, for no reason? U-M team concludes that common, costly clot test has few benefits | University of Michigan Health System
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