In memoriam: Lee VanBremen, PhD (1938–2012)
February 2013—Lee VanBremen, PhD, 74, executive vice president of the CAP from 1989 to 2001, died on Nov. 15, 2012 of aspiration pneumonia, a complication of Parkinson’s disease.
Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now
Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 1:00–2:00 PM ET
In this webinar, we will examine how immune recognition after allogeneic HCT can influence leukemia relapse and disease progression. The session will highlight the clinical relevance of HLA loss of heterozygosity (LOH), approaches used for its detection, and how LOH findings may support transplant strategies, including considerations for donor selection in subsequent transplantation.
Webinar presenter Alberto Cardoso Martins Lima, PhD, Clinical consulting scientist in histocompatibility,
specializing in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) at IGEN/AFIP São Paulo and CHC/UFPR in Curitiba, Brazil
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Wednesday, June 24, 2026, 12:00–1:00 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the expanded clinical utility of HER2 IHC scoring in metastatic breast cancer and its impact on your practice
Webinar presenter Michelle Shiller, DO, AP, CP, MGP, FACP, Baylor University Medical Center.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
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CAP TODAY
Twilight zone for CVD risk markers?
February 2013—Times are tough all over. For the middle class, for newspapers, for François Hollande and his fellow French Socialists.
Consider adding cardiac risk markers to that list. Despite decades of research and clinical experience, the marker conversation—what to measure, how, in whom—has become more an endless loop than a solid lineup. Old standbys still turn up in studies of novel markers, and tests that have arguably outlasted their usefulness still adhere, like barnacles, to laboratory menus. Some observers are even questioning the tenets of risk assessment.
Quality assurance service programs
February 2013—Bio-Rad Laboratories has released three External Quality Assurance Service (EQAS) programs for clinical laboratories and near-patient/point-of-care settings worldwide. They are cardiac markers, ethanol/ammonia, and lipids.
Latest anticoagulants—nuts and bolts for labs
February 2013—The list of anticoagulants has grown in recent years, which means there’s more to know about whether, when, and how to monitor. Last month in CAP TODAY, Michael Laposata, MD, PhD, spoke briefly about the newer drugs and explained how the older ones—warfarin, heparin, and low-molecular-weight heparin—work, and what that means for labs. This month, he returns to the newest of the major anticoagulants.
From the President’s Desk: Transformational practice—2 in spotlight
February 2013—A National Football League playoff game was on the ceiling monitor in the airport lounge where I was trying to work on this column, and the announcer was talking about how well they were moving the ball. My first reaction was that he sounded awfully excited for a guy with only one ball to move. Maybe he should come to work at the CAP and see what real excitement is.
AMP case report: Multilocus sequencing for rapid identification of molds
February 2013—CAP TODAY and the Association for Molecular Pathology have teamed up to bring molecular case reports to CAP TODAY readers, starting this month. AMP members will write the reports using clinical cases from their own practices that show molecular testing’s important role in diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and more. We aim to publish a few a year. The first such report comes from the University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle. (If you would like to submit a case report, please e-mail the AMP at amp@amp.org. For more information about the AMP, visit www.amp.org.)
Hemolysis—can better processes add up to millions?
February 2013—If anybody is a believer in programs to reduce hemolysis rates in the hospital, it’s Dennis Ernst, MT(ASCP), director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education. Ever since he left the bench 15 years ago, Ernst has been traveling the country with a mission: to show clinical laboratories, nursing departments, hospital administrators, and clinicians that the payoff from high-quality phlebotomy is much greater than they might realize. Despite hemolysis being the No. 1 reason the laboratory rejects blood specimens, hemolysis does not strike randomly, and it’s not inevitable, Ernst emphasizes. “Typically the causes of hemolysis are all behavioral,” he says.
Rx for optimizing rapid flu test performance
January 2013—With the arrival of another flu season—this one early and intense—rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTs) are once again occupying many laboratory directors’ minds. But although laboratories have found RIDTs useful for the last decade, evaluations of the test kits’ performance have been limited to manufacturers’ product inserts and a few small-scale studies. Like swing shift and day shift workers in the hospital, RIDTs have not been brought together for an assessment side by side.
Triple play in lab’s MALDI-TOF efforts
January 2013—When James Musser, MD, PhD, and colleagues at Houston’s The Methodist Hospital submitted a study for publication this fall (to “one of the prestigious weeklies based in a northeastern part of the country,” says Dr. Musser), they were prepared to answer questions from reviewers.
How anticoags work, and what that means for labs
January 2013—When to monitor and how? These questions were simpler when the list of anticoagulants patients were given was two or three deep—warfarin and unfractionated heparin, and maybe low-molecular-weight heparin. But the number of anticoagulants has grown and so has the complexity. Old and new—Michael Laposata, MD, PhD, covered the major anticoagulants and antiplatelet drugs in a recent AACC webinar and again at the CAP ’12 annual meeting in September. Here, this month, is an edited transcript of what he said in the webinar about warfarin and heparin and briefly about the newer drugs. In the February issue: a close-up look at fondaparinux, bivalirudin, rivaroxaban, dabigatran, lepirudin, and argatroban.