FEATURE ARTICLES

Laboratory Incidents Specialist Hema Mistry summarises the 2016 SHOT Annual Report and looks at why the same errors are still occurring, and why many of them could have been prevented.

The committee of the British Society for Microbial Technology reports from its annual scientific meeting, held earlier in the year at PHE Colindale in London.

Next month, the International Convention Centre in Birmingham will host one of the largest gatherings of biomedical and life science companies held anywhere in the world. The following selection of brief exhibitor previews provides a taste of what IBMS Biomedical Science Congress delegates and visitors may find to interest them on individual stands in the exhibition.

Support for antimicrobial susceptibility methodology is changing, and laboratories face testing times in this important area of practice. Here, Andrew Ferguson and Rahila Chaudhry assess different approaches.

Multidrug resistance exhibited by a range of microorganisms is a growing problem, a prime example being that resulting from carbapenemase production. Here, Gemma Vanstone and colleagues assess the value of the RESIST-3 O.K.N. lateral-flow immunochromatography assay.

Since the introduction of the ISAC microarray more than a decade ago, an increasing number of allergist and other specialists have made use of its broad and detailed sensitisation profiles, as this overview from Thermo Fisher Scientific illustrates.

Pathology and cancer leaders from the UK and across Europe met in London in May at a Philips Digital Pathology Workshop to learn how a Lean-based business tool can be used to build the case for digital pathology.

The external quality assessment of point-of-care testing (POCT) has not been a prominent feature of coverage in the literature over the past decade or more, as the examples highlighted below demonstrate. However, with the ever-increasing application of POCT in modern clinical medicine, this is an area of quality management that requires attention.

Faecal immunochemical testing is a fairly recent advance in the screening of patients for inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer. Success in Scotland has shown that implementation of FIT can reduce the number of unnecessary colonoscopies, as Judith Strachan explains.

With publication of the final part of Stago’s DiET study into venous thromboembolism, Laurence Loï considers the role of D-dimer testing when clinicians are faced with elderly patients in the emergency setting.

Next month the twelfth in the biennial Congress series will return to the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, and the focus once again will be on the very best that biomedical science and commercial colleagues have to offer. Here, Pathology in Practice provides a brief overview of the four-day event.

Although the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has issued a warning that the last line of antibiotics is failing, there are encouraging signs that antibiotic stewardship is improving, with healthcare and veterinary professionals making positive changes in prescribing practice.

Pathology services will become strategically more, not less, important as healthcare continues to embrace the world of preventative medicine. Here, Paul Lindsell argues against the case for consolidation and calls for increased investment.

Beth Mytton talks with laboratory staff to gain an insight into the experiences of four hospital sites now using capillary electrophoresis as a front-line method in the diagnosis of haemoglobinopathies.

The third in this series of articles on individual aspects of the assessment of uncertainty of measurement sees Stephen MacDonald consider the common currency of standard uncertainty, and provide some examples.

Meeting the demand for increasing faecal calprotectin assay requests has seen testing for this biomarker increase significantly over the past several years. Here, Amanda Appleton explains how use of a turbidimetric immunoassay is meeting the challenge.

In September the twelfth in the biennial Congress series will return to the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, the focus this year being on linking learning to the laboratory. Here, Pathology in Practice provides an early taster of the event and associated exhibition.

In this second in a series of articles on individual aspects of the assessment of uncertainty of measurement, Stephen MacDonald continues with an assessment of the impact of assay modelling.

A review of the NICE guideline on ovarian cancer has identified new evidence related to the diagnostic accuracy of serum tumour marker HE4 and the ROMA score, resulting in a decision to update advice on what serum tumour marker tests should be carried out routinely to aid diagnosis.

Pathology in Practice looks into a simple but effective solution to stop tissue sections becoming detached and floating away when faced with the processing conditions typical of techniques such immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridisation.