Vesna Dobrijević LABORATORIES

☻ LABORATORIES ☻ Types of laboratories and laboratory tests Medical laboratory Types of laboratories Departments Medical laboratory staff Laboratory tests Laboratory informatics

Medical laboratory A medical laboratory or clinical laboratory is a laboratory where tests are done on clinical specimens in order to get information about the health of a patient as pertaining to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease.

Types of laboratories In many countries, there are two main types of labs that process the majority of medical specimens: Hospital (clinical) laboratory Private (or community) laboratory

Departments Laboratory medicine is generally divided into two sections, and each of which is further divided into a number of units. These two sections are: 1. Anatomic pathology Units included here are: Histopathology Cytopathology Electron microscopy Anatomy Physiology Histology Pathology

Departments 2. Clinical pathology Units included here are: Clinical microbiology Clinical chemistry Hematology Genetics Reproduction biology

Medical laboratory staff The following is the hierarchy of the clinical laboratory staff from highest authority to lowest: medical director pathologist, clinical biologist resident in pathology pathologist assistant laboratory manager department supervisor lead technologist cytotechnologist, medical laboratory scientist, histotechnologist medical laboratory technician, histotechnician medical laboratory assistant phlebotomist transcriptionist specimen processor, secretary

Laboratory tests What are lab tests? Laboratory tests are medical procedures that involve testing samples of blood, urine, or other tissues or substances in the body. Why does your doctor use lab tests? Your doctor uses laboratory tests to help: identify changes in your health condition before any symptoms occur diagnose a disease or condition before you have symptoms plan your treatment for a disease or condition evaluate your response to a treatment, or monitor the course of a disease over time

Laboratory tests How are lab tests analyzed? Laboratories perform tests on the sample to see if it reacts to different substances. For biochemistry samples, blood is usually centrifuged and serum is separated. What do lab tests show? Lab tests show whether or not your results fall within normal ranges. Normal test values are usually given as a range, rather than as a specific number, because normal values vary from person to person. What is normal for one person may not be normal for another person.

Laboratory tests What factors affect your lab test results? Many factors can affect test results, including: sex age race medical history general health specific foods drugs you are taking how closely you follow preparatory instructions variations in laboratory techniques variation from one laboratory to another

Laboratory informatics Laboratories today are held together by a system of software programmes and computers that exchange data about patients, test requests, and test results known as a Laboratory Information System or LIS. This system enables hospitals and labs to order the correct test requests for each patient, keep track of individual patient or specimen histories, and help guarantee a better quality of results as well as printing hard copies of the results for patient charts and doctors to check.

Key words pertaining to the diagnosis – koji se odnose na dijagnozu specimen, sample – uzorak majority – većina general practitioners – lekari opšte prakse department – katedra solid tissue – čvrsto tkivo evaluation – procena smear – bris inflammation - zapaljenje encompass– obuhvata phlebotomist - tehničar kvalifikovan za vađenje krvi

Questions 1. What is medical (or clinical) laboratory? 2. There are two sections of laboratory medicine? Which one generally? 3. What are laboratory tests?