Cover Story

Drugs-of-abuse Testing
Acetaminophen: hidden complexities of a simple overdose. Poisoning with this common agent may cause transient rises in hepatic transaminases, or lead to fulminant hepatic failure, metabolic acidosis, renal failure, cerebral edema, and death.
By Charles McKay, MD, F(ACMT), F(ACEP), ABIM

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Features

Clinical Issues

Direct thrombin inhibitors: Clinical uses, mechanism of action, and laboratory measurement
Given its central role in the clot formation, thrombin is an attractive target for the development of agents that effectively interfere with thrombogenesis.

Lab Management

Where does the LIS go from here?

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Special Feature

Autoantibodies key to early diagnosis of autoimmune diseases
Autoimmune diseases — difficult to recognize — take an average of five years and four doctors to get a correct diagnosis.

Education and Training

Personalize your lab’s outreach selling strategy inside-and-out
Engineering effective relationships utilizes no magic, no chemistry, nor luck but a customer’s “trivia.”

Executive Snapshot

Sharples makes waves in microbiology at COPAN
This executive VP finds continually changing microbes provide an always-exciting potential for new challenges and surprises.

Departments

From the Editor

MLO is lookin’ good!
By Carren Bersch

Letters to the Editor

Readers Respond

The Observatory

News/Trends/Analysis

Columns

Liability and the Lab

Expanding role of RCM, ICD-10, MDx

Management Q&A

Addressing management issues

• Use proficiency testing in the lab as an investigative tool
• Leading a multigenerational staff

Tips from the Clinical Experts

Answering your questions

• Phlebotomists act as educators
• Should we accept half-full tubes?
• Can phlebotomists collect non-blood specimens?

Mentoring Minute

Diary of the “mad” med-lab techs

Washington Report

New rules may make buying lab space better than leasing

Product Focus

High-speed digital cameras help researchers see fluids at microscale level