News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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New Guidelines Aim to Raise Standards for Laboratory-Acquired Infections in Clinical Pathology Laboratories

Medical laboratory directors and pathologists are likely to find their lab’s safety standards increasingly under the spotlight

Clinical laboratories and pathology groups should be aware of new safety guidelines that address the risk of laboratory-acquired infections (LAI). A panel of experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released safety guidelines for medical laboratory workers.

The guidelines are intended to improve safety specifically in diagnostic laboratories that handle specimens from humans and animals. Statistics indicate the clinical laboratory workers have infection rates for certain diseases that can be up to 20 times greater than that of the general population! It is believed current data understate the true rate of laboratory-acquired infections within the nation’s medical laboratories and pathology groups. (more…)

New Rapid Molecular Pathology Test for Tuberculosis Wins Favor with World Health Organization

Medical Laboratory Test Offers Improved Accuracy and Faster Time-To-Answer

It’s big news when an international health body endorses a new proprietary clinical laboratory test. That’s why pathologists will be interested to learn that, earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) publicly recommended that nations incorporate a new rapid molecular test for tuberculosis into their disease testing programs.

The clinical laboratory test that the World Health Organization endorsed is the Xpert MTB/RIF test manufactured by Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD), the molecular diagnostics company based in Sunnyvale, California. The assay is a 100-minute rapid tuberculosis (TB) test. It is a fully-automated nucleic acid amplification test and WHO advised that the assay be introduced into clinical use under defined conditions as an integral part of a nation’s program to diagnose and treat TB and multi-drug resistant TB. (more…)

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