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Clinical
Pathology Division The
Clinical Pathology Division of the Department of Pathology at
Westchester Medical Center is located on the main floor (Section J)
of the hospital. It provides regular, specialized and urgent
services to the patients at the Medical Center as well as the
referred patients from the community physicians or other hospitals.
The division is accredited (with
distinction) by the College of American Pathologists and has
functioned as a reference laboratory for the State of New York. It
includes the following laboratories:
- The Flow Cytometry
laboratory carries out studies on bone marrows, peripheral
bloods and lymph nodes on hundreds of patients with leukemias or
lymphomas each year. This laboratory also performs large numbers
of immune monitoring and HLA tissue typing.
- The Transplant-Immunology
laboratory supports several active transplantation programs at
the Medical Center. These include bone marrow, kidney and liver
transplants.
- The Special Chemistry
laboratory performs numerous specialized procedures on
endocrinology, drug monitoring, viral serologies, etc., using
radioassays, enzyme immunoassays, radioimmunometric assays,
fluorescence polarization, microparticle enzyme immunoassays and
chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassays.
- The Special Hematology
laboratory performs cytochemistries as well as studies on
platelet function, plasma coagulation factors and inhibitors,
plasma proteins and hemoglobins.
- The Special
Microbiology-Serology laboratory performs tests to detect
antibodies as well as antigens for various infectious agents as
well as specialized studies for certain recently defined
emerging infectious diseases. This section is also involved in
molecular typing of organisms to aid in hospital epidemiology.
Findings of this laboratory have been published and presented at
the national meetings.
- The Cystic Fibrosis
Laboratory (sweat testing) is the regional laboratory for
diagnosis of cystic fibrosis and performs the largest number of
these tests in the state. New methods that have developed in
this laboratory for quality assurance have been presented at the
national meeting.
- The Microbiology-Parasitology-Mycology
laboratory uses a wide variety of methods in the study of
infectious diseases.
- The General Core Laboratory.
This laboratory combines the functions of STAT laboratory with
that of regular Chemistry, Hematology and Clinical Microscopy
laboratories. All functions of this laboratory are available on
a 7 days a week and 24 hours a day basis. There are some
restrictions on the types of tests performed on the off hours,
week-ends and holidays.
Elimination of the STAT
laboratory and its inclusion in the General Core laboratory is
the result of progressive automation and increase in efficiency
of the regular laboratories. As the result, the turn-around
times for the regular tests (all of which are monitored on a
daily basis) has been reduced to an hour or less. Since this
corresponds to the national standards for STAT testing (one hour
or less), the need for STAT requests has therefore been
obviated.
A "superstat"
service is available for certain critical tests (e.g., blood
counts, electrolytes, etc.) on hand delivered specimens. The
turn-around time on these samples is in minutes. Pre-analytic
automation is in place.
Automated equipment that will accession, process, centrifuge,
aliquot (if necessary), automated track that will bring the
specimen to the instrument(s) and automated storage are the
features of the pre-analytic automation. Furthermore,
consolidation of chemistry and immunochemistry testing will also
occur. We expect that with this equipment we will have further
improvement of turn-around-time, efficiency and reduced cost.
Educational Activities
In addition to an accredited
residency program in Clinical Pathology, the service provides
basic training in Laboratory Medicine for the second-year
medical students. More advanced training is provided as an
elective for the fourth-year students. Training is also provided
for Hematology-Oncology fellows and Infectious Diseases fellows.
Goals and Mission of Clinical
Pathology Service
Today's practice of medicine in an office or a clinic setting
often requires specialized testing. Since most hospital
laboratories do not perform these procedures, the samples are
sent to reference laboratories and the results become available
only after the patient has left the office.
The Clinical Laboratories at the Medical Center perform such
specialized tests on an emergency basis through a Rapid Response
Regional Laboratory. This provides needed diagnostic service,
not otherwise available for regional hospitals, clinics and
doctor's offices. |
