Archives of pathology & laboratory medicine
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Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. · Nov 1990
Editorial Biography Historical ArticleErnest A. Codman, MD, the end result idea and The Product of a Hospital. A commentary.
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Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. · May 1990
Utilization patterns of frozen autologous red blood cells. Experience in a referral center and a community hospital.
The risks of homologous blood transfusion have motivated some blood centers and private industry to consider providing long-term storage of frozen, autologous red blood cells as a service. The usefulness of this practice is unknown. We performed a retrospective analysis of frozen autologous red blood cell use in two hospitals. ⋯ Only 4 (21%) of these latter 19 patients who donated without a specific planned use eventually received their frozen autologous red blood cells. Long-term autologous frozen red blood cell storage can improve medical management of some patients with anticipated surgical procedures or unusual requirements for transfusion. However, our study suggests that most autologous units frozen without specific planned use will not be transfused.
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Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. · Apr 1990
Calibration as a source of imprecision in cholesterol testing. Ramifications for patient risk classification.
Routine calibration of a cholesterol assay system may compromise rather than improve precision. We compared an enzymatic assay on a centrifugal analyzer using a fixed factor with a factor recalculated from the response of standards assayed with each run. ⋯ With the risk classification system in effect at the time of the study, 32 (9.4%) of 342 patient serum specimens assayed for cholesterol were classified differently based solely on the method of data reduction. Thus, recalibration of our cholesterol assay system contributed to greater imprecision and to discrepancies in classification of patients' risk levels.