Lab Rat or Button Monkey? » Good sites

Chlamydia screening promotion problems

dapo — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:36:25 +0000

I saw a worrying story on the BBC health site today. It concerns chlamydia screening in the UK. It seems the story is based on some research which can be found here. A provional PDF of the research can be found here (Note this link may break in the future). As the BBC article points out, chlamydia is a “silent infection”. You do not get any obvious signs of having caught the infection. With current rates are rising you would like to hope that promoting screening would be a higher proirity. It still seems that some things are still taboo.

Xanthochromia

dapo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:26:31 +0000

I am currently working on a series of lectures for the Medical Laboratory Assistants in our laboratory. The lecture series is designed to provide some background for the MLA on the various tests we perform and hopefully help them to understand some the clinical details they might see to help them in test requesting.

Xanthochromia is one of the lectures I am currently working on. Whilst performing some research, I found a Youtube clip on performing a Lumbar puncture which I thought might be useful for other people to use. It did make think that this is a really good way of using Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_0gOI8uV0

Clinical Chemistry Podcast: Vitamin D with Dr Graham Beastall

dapo — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:52:04 +0000

I have finally got some time to write a review for the Vitamin D podcast from Clinical Chemistry.

The interview isn’t too long and does not go into great technical depth but is a great listen and I certainly learned a few things from listening to it. I knew that there are two different sources of vitamin D, diet and production by the body due to exposure to sunlight. I didn’t realise that animal and sunlight derived vitamin D is Vitamin D3 and invertebrate and plant derived vitamin d is Vitamin D2.

My colleagues have discussed the numerous conditions linked to Vitamin D other than the traditional role in calcium metabolism. It seems that currently the mechanism of protection provided by Vitamin D is uncertain but there are several possible avenues being investigated.

Discussion touched upon the slightly problematic reference ranges. The traditional reference range has been defined by analysis of a healthy population for the analyte and find the standard deviation and the mean. The reference range is from -2 SD below the mean to +2 SD above mean. Or in other words, its the range which covers 95% of the popultation. With Vitamin D, this produces a limit of 25 nmol/L. Recent evidence has suggested that people with a “normal” Vitamin D level are still risk of a variety of conditions. There is evidence to suggest that limit 75 nmol/L provides protection against the various conditions that Vitamin has been linked with. Like cholesterol, it seems that the reference range for Vitamin is based on health benefits rather than the traditional route.

One of the problems discussed regarding the analysis of Vitamin D is the link of standardisation and lack of agreed calibration material. Numerous labs currently measure Vitamin D with an immunassay. This approach has difficulty is differentiating between Vitamin D2 and Vitamin D3. Techniques like liquid chromatography linked to a tandem mass spectrometer can provide measurement of Vitamin D2 and D3 but the equipment requires a considerable capital outlay and requires a high level of technical expertise.

As it stands, Vitamin D is being implicated as having a protective role in a considerable number of conditions with more probably yet to be discovered. There are considerable hurdles to clear in the analysis of Vitamin D but is certain that Vitamin has a considerable role outside of its traditional role in calcium metabolism.

This was a really worth while podcast to listen to. I have listened to two episodes and I will write these up soon.

Audio: http://media.aacc.org/CCJPodcasts/060309Beastall.mp3

Transcript: http://www.aacc.org/events/podcast/Documents/060309Beastall.pdf

Extra RSS feeds for training site

dapo — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:16:23 +0000

I have been re-examining the content of the training site and realised I could add some extra RSS feeds to the front page. I have added feeds from the Department of Health and the NHS. I hope these extra feeds prove to be a good resource. If any one can suggest other suitable feeds, I am willing to add more.

New podcasts

dapo — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:27:19 +0000

I have been looking at my training site and updating a few things and in the process I have found several sources of podcasts! The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has an audio podcast as well as some vidoes.

Also, I found the the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, the people behind the Clinical Chemistry journal, provide a podcast.

I think its great that these heavy journals are providing this kind of content. I have download a few episodes and will aim to listen whilst going to and from work next week. Hope to provide some feedback soon.

The dangers of too much detox

dapo — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:00:12 +0000

Too much water can be a bad thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7521137.stm

Warning over blood-taking method

dapo — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:58:48 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7525932.stm

BMJ CPD Site

dapo — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:35:57 +0000

Whilst playing around with Google Ads for the site, it came up with a CPD site from the BMJ which I thought I would have a look at. It can be found here if you want a look too.

NHS waiting times up

dapo — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:36:22 +0000

BBC Health are reporting that waiting times under labour are up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7271772.stm

BBC Health items

dapo — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:01:56 +0000

Been looking at the BBC Health website and found some news items which I would like to bring to your attention.

The first story is a protest about the NHS refroms. As someone who works in the NHS, I do feel that we should focus on primary role of patient care rther than all of these targets. Taking care of this will take care of the rest. If we spend time working out which patient is getting close the the 4 hour A&E limit, it means less time is spent on actually treating the patients. This links to a story about making the NHS independent, removing the political tinkering. I do have reservations as this could mean an opening for more private sector involvement. My objection to greater private sector involvement is that they will do the same job and making a profit, why can’t the public sector perform to the same standards?

My second story is about the Papworth Hospital stopping transplants due to high mortality rates. It is sad to see such famous hospital suffer like this, I take heart from the fact that are brave enough to stand up and say this is not good enough. The pressure on the hospital most have been immense, equally, the pressure on them for their success rate. It was a tough decision but I think it was the right one.