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Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 18e
Chapter e53. The Clinical Laboratory in Modern Health Care
Sections: The Clinical Laboratory in Modern Health Care: Introduction, Rationale for Performing Clinical Laboratory Tests, Critical Values, "Stat" Orders, Sensitivity and Specificity in the Clinical Laboratory, Clinical Laboratory Diagnostic Principles, Reference Ranges, Sources of Error in Clinical Laboratory Testing, Point-of-Care Testing, Issues Specific to Genetic Testing, Limitations to Molecular Genetic Testing, Regulation of the Clinical Laboratory, Further Readings.
Topics Discussed: clinical laboratory techniques; diagnostic tests, routine; laboratory; laboratory diagnosis; laboratory techniques and procedures.
Excerpt:"Modern medicine relies extensively on the clinical laboratory as a key component of health care. It is estimated that in current practice, at least 60–70% of all clinical decisions rely to some extent on a laboratory result. For many diseases, the clinical laboratory provides essential diagnostic information. As an example, histopathologic analysis provides basic information about histologic type and classification of tumors and their degree of invasion into adjacent tissues. Microbiologic testing is required to identify infectious organisms and determine antibiotic susceptibility. For many common diseases, expert groups have produced standard guidelines for diagnosis that rely on defined clinical laboratory values, e.g., blood glucose or hemoglobin A1C levels form the basis for diagnosis of diabetes mellitus; the presence of specific serum antibodies is required for diagnosis of many rheumatologic diseases; and serum levels of cardiac markers are a mainstay in diagnosis of acute coronary syndromes...."
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