Thursday, August 20, 2026. 12 PM-1:30 PM ET
Hear from an expert in HER2 IHC whose work has contributed to current scoring guidelines.
Webinar presenter Josef Ruschoff, MD, PhD, Former Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Targos, Senior Consultant of Discovery Life Sciences, Kassel, Germany.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
To be rescheduled to a future date
Learn about digital pathology technology that is future-ready, yet practical for today’s
laboratory needs.
Webinar presenters Scott Hammond, Senior Systems Consultant, Digital Pathology Division, Wexner Medical Center, Department of Pathology, and Ursula Hofer, Imaging Technologist, Pathology Digital Imaging Lab, Wexner Medical Center, Department of Pathology, and Sandra Banky, PA(ASCP), Director of Operations, Wexner Medical Center, Department of Pathology.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
July 2026
Q. What is the recommended approach for determining the HIV status of patients who are taking HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis or have received oral PrEP within the past three months or intramuscular PrEP within the past 12 months? Read answer.
Q. Our providers pointed out that lipoprotein(a) results from different laboratories are discordant, so they asked us to bring the assay in-house. Is this a good idea? Read answer.
June 2026
Q. When performing a manual platelet estimate from a sodium citrate tube because of EDTA-induced clumping, do you still multiply the result by 1.1, even if you are not using an analyzer to perform the estimate? Read answer.
Q. How is Helicobacter pylori 13C urea breath testing regulated in clinical laboratories? Read answer.
May 2026
Q. When we receive new immunohistochemistry antibodies or DAB kits, they undergo a quality control process. Every institution where I have worked has done this task a little differently. When a laboratory receives a new antibody, what is the correct QC process? What if we receive two units of the same antibody from the same lot but one came in on Thursday and one on Friday? Read answer.
March 2026
Q. How should a blood bank respond when a non-irradiated blood product is inadvertently transfused to a patient who requires irradiated components, and what steps must be taken to ensure patient safety and regulatory compliance? Read answer.
Q. We are using direct smears for nongynecologic fine-needle aspirations and thinking about switching to liquid-based cytology (SurePath) preparation. There is nothing in the CAP accreditation checklist that pertains to a switch in slide preparation method… Read answer.
February 2026
Q. Why aren’t more medical students interested in applying for a pathology residency? Read answer.
Q. What is your opinion on employing qualitative rapid homogeneous immunoassay (enzyme-multiplied immunoassay technique, ELISA) urine screens for tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) testing in pregnant women and emergencies involving neonates, particularly at a low cutoff threshold of 300 ng/mL? Read answer.
January 2026
Q. What is the CAP’s stance on antibody identification software, which is available via subscription, middleware, or an open-source platform? Read answer.
Q. Can toxicology testing be performed on a person who has been deceased for two years? Read answer.
December 2025
Q. Now that the CMS allows direct observation for competency assessment to be performed virtually, does the CAP also allow it? If so, can you provide guidance? Read answer.
Q. We have implemented quality control at 10x in accordance with the Westgard rules. I use three levels of QC. If the results of two levels of QC are moving properly above and below the mean and only one level is showing a trend of a 10x rule violation, what corrective action should I take? Read answer.
November 2025
Q. Clinicians at my hospital doubt my prolactin results. They report patients with prominent pituitary adenomas who have normal prolactin results. There are other patients who have hyperprolactinemia but no adenoma or galactorrhea. In those patients, the prolactin concentrations remain elevated even after therapy. Can you clarify? Read answer.
Q. Is it necessary for a lab to report a corrected sodium level when the glucose level is really high? Studies show pseudohyponatremia can occur due to hyperglycemia. How common is this, and how do we decide which correction factor to use? Is it possible that this is easily overlooked by providers due to comorbidities in patients? Some references say there is a need to correct glucose for each 100 mg/dL increase above 400 mg/dL. Read answer.
October 2025
Q. Is telepathology used much in the United States for histology interpretation and diagnosis? For example, is it used to interpret digitally transmitted histology slides when working from home? Read answer.
Q. When a patient has a hematocrit level of ≥ 55 percent and a normal PT and APTT, do you still correct sodium citrate and ask for a redraw? Is it crucial to ask for a redraw when the emergency department orders a stat PT and APTT? Read answer.
September 2025
Q. Some of my laboratory staff are reluctant to reach out to the CAP with accreditation questions on checklist requirements because they fear that doing so will lead CAP inspectors to scrutinize those related items more closely during the next inspection. How does the College manage information from these phone calls? Read answer.
Q. An oncologist recently told me to perform a platelet count on a sodium citrate (blue top) tube even though the platelet results from the EDTA tube were valid—no platelet flags, a Q-flag value of zero, a normal platelet histogram, and no clumps seen on slide review. Based on this evidence, this patient is not an EDTA clumper and using the blue-top tube isn’t indicated or recommended, as far as I know. What is the science behind this request? There were platelet clumps in the blue-top tubes (platelet instrument flags and clumps seen on the slides from the citrate tubes), which further invalidated these results in my opinion as a licensed laboratory scientist. Read answer.
