MCL Featured Stories
High-sensitivity troponin T is a new assay recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This assay is most often used to evaluate patients with possible acute ischemic heart disease, but it also has a variety of uses in the more chronic setting.
For people with encephalitis, rapid treatment of their acute brain inflammation is critical for avoiding devastating physical and cognitive deficits. But appropriate treatment requires identifying the culprit causing the symptoms.
Mike Baisch, Principal Systems Engineer at Mayo Clinic, discusses staffing to workload in phlebotomy areas with a focus on "on-site operational needs," which is defined as "staff effort that does not deal directly with patients or their samples, or with the indirect tasks needed to support those patient-care efforts."
A breakthrough in pathology, achieved more than a century ago (allegedly on a frozen window ledge in Rochester, Minnesota) has evolved into an innovative aspect of care at Mayo Clinic. Mayo is one of the only medical centers in the United States to routinely use a tissue-freezing process that provides analysis of tissue samples while the patient is still in the operating room.
Mike Baisch, Principal Systems Engineer at Mayo Clinic, discusses staffing to workload in phlebotomy areas with a focus on indirect effort, which includes tasks performed that don’t involve the patient or a patient’s sample.
There have been concerns in the U.S. recently about the possible harmful side effects from absorbing gadolinium-based contrast agents into the body during some MRI exams. To address some of the anxiety and concerns over this issue, Paul Jannetto, Ph.D., DABCC, FAACC, and Joshua Bornhorst, Ph.D., DABCC, FAACC, Co-Directors of the Mayo Clinic Metals Laboratory and leading experts in this field, have compiled the following list of the most up-to-date information.
By taking into account an individual’s genes, lifestyle, and environment, precision medicine offers the prospect of finding individualized therapies that might ultimately cure diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Yet, as with other technological revolutions, precision medicine’s quest for innovation bumps up against a host of legal issues—for patients as well as laboratories and providers of care.
This case presents a female patient in her 70s with pain in the right upper quadrant. An ultrasound showed pelviectasis bilaterally, right greater than left. What is the diagnosis?
A recent Mayo Clinic study has found that many U.S. health care providers are habitually ordering a mostly unnecessary, and quite expensive, genetic test to identify a patient’s hereditary risk of venous thromboembolism.
This case presents an unusual colon polyp on an asymptomatic early 70 year-old male. At the time of screening colonoscopy, two small left colon polyps were noted and excised. What is the diagnosis?
Ann Moyer, M.D., Ph.D., discusses an additional gene, NUDT15, which is important in the prediction of thiopurine-related toxicity This gene has been added to our TPMT genotyping assay available through Mayo Medical Laboratories.
In the war against microbes, human beings are vastly outnumbered—and losing the weapons race.
Ultimately, a pathologist has to commit to a diagnosis. Many trainees have difficulty committing to a diagnosis for fear of being wrong. Gary Keeney, M.D., Consultant in the Division of Anatomic Pathology at Mayo Clinic, provides a unique teaching approach with his cases, detailing the ancillary studies and discussing the differential diagnosis of the cases. View case #2.