Platelet transfusions: safety, cost, and workflow
October 2022—The jury may no longer be out on whether pathogen reduction of platelet units reduces the risk of a septic transfusion reaction enough to replace culturing of platelet units.
Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now
Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 11 AM-12 PM ET
Hear experts review the biological and clinical significance of the HER2 expression continuum in breast tissue, providing a clearer understanding of how these variations might impact diagnosis, and discuss the emerging importance of documenting HER2-low and HER2-ultralow categories using a validated IHC assay.
Webinar presenters Keith Wharton, MD, PhD, Global Medical Affairs Leader–Pathology, Roche Diagnostics Solutions, and Hannah Y. Wen, MD, PhD, Director, Breast Pathology Fellowship, Associate Team Leader, Breast Pathology Team, Attending Pathologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. The webinar is made possible by a special educational grant from Roche.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Thursday, October 29, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the evolving role of PD-L1 testing in HNSCC and ovarian cancer.
Webinar presenter Georgios Deftereos, MD, Professor of Pathology, Associate Director of the Clinical Cancer Genomics Laboratory, Director of Molecular Cytopathology, University of California, San Francisco
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. The webinar is made possible by a special educational grant from Agilent.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 1 PM-2 PM ET
Hear an expert discuss the challenges of detecting NRG1 fusions and how RNA-based testing can support more comprehensive fusion identification in clinical practice.
Webinar presenter Benjamin Weinberg, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Attending Physician
specializing in gastrointestinal medical oncology
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. The webinar is made possible by a special educational grant from Diaceutics.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
Monday, November 16, 2026, 12:30 PM-2 PM ET
Hear experts discuss a multidisciplinary approach to oncopathology for HER2
assessments for solid tumors in the absence of a companion diagnostic.
Webinar presenters Funda Meric-Bernstam, MD, Chair, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics Medical Director, Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, and Emina E. Torlakovic, MD, PhD, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Biomarker Quality Assurance, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and Carol Cheung, MD, PhD, JD, FRCPC, Deputy Director, Canadian Biomarker Quality, Assurance—Programme canadien d’assurance de la qualité des biomarqueurs
CAP TODAY does not endorse any of the products or services named within. This program is being sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and AstraZeneca. The speaker is being compensated for the presentation. The program is not CME accredited and may not be used for CME accreditation.
Moderated by: Bob McGonnagle, Publisher, CAP TODAY
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Clinical Pathology
Sodium measurement—when the method matters
October 2022—William E. Winter, MD, D(ABCC), is blunt about whether to report a corrected sodium: He would worry if his name were on such a report. “I think you have to be careful about formulas,” he said in his “hot topic” talk at the AACC meeting in July.
Purchased for the pandemic? Rethinking instrumentation
October 2022—Who’s doing what with instruments purchased at the peak of the pandemic? That and next-generation sequencing are what CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle asked Compass Group members about when they met virtually on Sept. 6. The Compass Group is an organization of not-for-profit IDN system laboratory leaders who collaborate to identify and share best practices and strategies.
As blood supply tightens, so too does mitigation
September 2022—Picture a performer juggling tenpins while walking a high wire, knowing that a hurricane looms. Add a safety net that could disappear at any time. That’s a sense of what hospital transfusion services experience in maintaining enough blood products to meet patients’ needs.
U.S. blood supply steadier but still short
August 2022—Blood is a precious resource and shouldn’t be treated as a commodity. That’s the consensus in the blood banking community, in line with a longstanding conviction that volunteer donations should remain at the blood system’s core. But as the worst of the pandemic appears to have passed, discussion of blood shortages has increasingly drawn on the vocabulary of commerce, and the warnings about the blood supply have been rife with references to supply chain problems that go beyond the need for more donations. Crises in the blood supply are nothing new, and while the health care system strives to stay prepared, the pandemic threw novel commercial and logistical factors into the mix, in some ways jumbling the expected order of a crisis for blood services. Hospitals scrambled to cope with a surge of COVID-19 patients while the spread of infection caused thousands of blood drives to be canceled, so there was a steep drop in supply of blood products, says Pampee Young, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, biomedical services, American Red Cross.
Looking for lab staff here, there, and overseas
August 2022—Higher wages help to fill open positions, when they can be offered, but in a labor market that’s as tight as ever, they’re often just a start. That’s why many laboratories are casting wider nets, though the hiring solutions tend to be long term.
Savings, schedules, new automation—labs weighing it all
August 2022—Running into the reality of staffing. Those are the words of a pathologist who said in the most recent Compass Group roundtable that its health system is making a push to obtain and test specimens “as close to home as possible.” Another Compass Group member said planning is underway for the new hospitals his system is going to build, “but we don’t know where staff will come from.” Here is what they and others told CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle on July 5.
Transgender care, in and beyond the lab
July 2022—Gabrielle Winston-McPherson, PhD, could be talking about almost any aspect of laboratory medicine as she recounts how the Henry Ford Health chemistry division, in which she is associate director, has identified a patient care need. She talks about the desire to improve health outcomes. Identifying problems in the preanalytical process. Appropriate test utilization. Putting together a team to develop training material. Assembling data and information prior to implementation. Informatics challenges. And, naturally, the perpetual financial concern of ensuring allocation of limited resources. How else would she—or any other laboratory professional—talk about the lab’s role in transgender health care? In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic. “It’s been in the news a lot these days, obviously,” says Matthew Krasowski, MD, PhD, clinical professor and vice chair, clinical pathology and laboratory services, University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. In fact, there are many other ways to discuss the topic.
‘A struggle every day’—outpatient center decisions
July 2022—A time of tough choices. A complex dance. This is how Compass Group members on a call with their colleagues, led by CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle, describe what it’s like to cover outpatient centers amid severe staff shortages. “We are consuming significant resources to get all our locations staffed,” one member says. Another predicts: “We will not be out of this staffing situation for 10 years.” Here is more of what they and others talked about on June 7 as COVID positivity rates were up and monkeypox was in the news. The Compass Group is an organization of not-for-profit IDN system laboratory leaders who collaborate to identify and share best practices and strategies.
One hospital’s story: Ins and outs of low titer O whole blood use in trauma
July 2022—Myriad questions had to be answered and plans made to put low titer O whole blood in the trauma bay at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Julie Katz Karp, MD, associate professor and director of transfusion medicine, reported why, when, and how it was done and where they stand today, in a process she describes as “a never-ending series of hoops.”