24 December 2015 (Thursday) - Clexane

Clexane injection contains the active ingredient enoxaparin, which is a low molecular weight heparin. It is used to stop blood clots forming within blood vessels

What is it used for?

• Treating deep vein thrombosis.
• Treating pulmonary embolism.
• Preventing thromboembolic disorders, particularly following surgery or in people bedridden due to illness.
• Treating blood clots in the coronary arteries in unstable angina and myocardial infarction.
• Preventing blood from clotting when it is filtered through a haemodialysis machine.

This isn’t new… I've been familiar with the stuff for a while. But a friend’s partner has recently been prescribed it.

It stings…

22 December 2015 (Tuesday) - Taking a Bung

Is this the future?

It is no secret that large parts of the NHS are going out to private tender and blood testing is not exempt from this.

In America where blood testing has always been privatized a scandal has been exposed in which agents of private laboratories are bribing medial practitioners to use their services over and above those of their competitors.

Furthermore they were bribing doctors to perform unnecessary blood tests.

At the moment there is little market for this in the UK pathology scene. But when we are all privatized will things be different?

22 December 2015 (Tuesday) - NHSBT Update

The December communication to hospitals from NHS Blood and Transplant came out today

It covered topics such as:

1.1  Group A FFP in trauma where the recipient's ABO group is not known

1.2  Stock Management of platelets over Christmas and New Year

1.3  NHSBT plans to produce HEV screened negative components

2.1 Update of H&I User Guide for 2015 – 2016

2.2 Therapeutic Apheresis Services Officially Open Oxford Unit

2.3 Supply Chain Modernisation (SCM) Project

2.4 NHSBT Mass Casualty Plans

2.5 New Patient Information Leaflets and updated Educational Resource

3.1 Training & Education Events and Courses

Sometimes this update is interesting, sometimes rather dull. This was one of the better ones…

20 December 2015 (Sunday) - Theranos

Theranos seems to be in trouble.

Theranos started off as a serious concern to the likes of me; they were offering a revolution to blood testing; cheap technology undercutting the current market.

Now they have fallen foul of regulating authorities; their technology isn’t all it was cracked out to be.

Those who rely on the results of blood tests have found that a reliable reproducible result is far better than a randomly generated number.

But we’ve known that all along….

16 December 2015 (Wednesday) - Blood Alcohol Levels

Here’s food for thought:

There is a scandal in the American courts. Blood samples taken on people accused of drink-driving offences would seem to be giving rather different results between the initial testing and subsequent testing two years later.

Clearly storage of samples is everything. But this isn’t news. Is it?

15 December 2015 (Tuesday) - Unsung Heroes

Here’s an interesting article I found in Facebook (of all places) over brekkie:

http://www.labtestingmatters.org/saved-by-the-lab

It is no great scientific article, but it told the tale of the importance of the hospital laboratory.

A patient (on oral anticoagulation) had massive bruising. This bruising was put down to poor venesection technique. However laboratory testing showed a ridiculously high INR and subsequently it transpired that the patient had been massively overdosed by a mistake in the pharmacy.

The lab identified the problem, saved the day, and possibly the patient’s life.

It is a shame that this sort of thing never makes the newspapers….

14 December 2015 (Monday) - Blagging Results

Here’s an interesting article from today’s news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-35090879

Although it is about nurses rather than biomedical scientists it gave me pause for thought. Basically (among other misdemeanours) two nurses didn’t perform routine near-patient glucose testing; preferring to make the results up themselves.

In the first instance I can’t help but feel that were these tests done in a laboratory setting there would be an audit trail including analyser information which would make getting away with such fabrication of results rather more difficult.

However given a manual system with no such electronic audit trail surely it is actually far easier to do the test than to try to make up plausible results. Such blagged results are going to be rather obvious if and when the patient’s clinical condition deteriorates.