The race to keep pace with drug use changes
February 2024—Xylazine prevalence, lab-developed testing, and new technology are converging at Yale New Haven Health in a way that gives rise to questions, worry, and new hope for faster drug testing.
Webinars and Sponsored Roundtables — Register Now
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
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AP and CP reporting—the needs, the caveats
February 2024—Anatomic and clinical pathology reporting—what’s working, what’s missing. Three pathologists (all board certified in informatics) and representatives of three information system companies met online Dec. 19 with CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle to talk about reporting needs, the changes, what’s optimal. The first half of their discussion begins here; the second half will be published in the March issue.
More progress, fewer barriers for PGx testing
January 2024—Sometimes even superb ideas can also turn out to be quite, well, bothersome. Zoom meetings. Bridal showers. Bike lanes. Parking apps. QR menu codes. And—if laboratories aren’t careful—the same can be true of pharmacogenomic testing. Just ask Ann Moyer, MD, PhD, associate professor, laboratory medicine and pathology, Mayo Clinic. When it comes to pharmacogenomic testing, laboratory medicine brings significant expertise to the table. But in clinical settings, physicians who prescribe the medications need to be familiar with how to use the test results. They also need to work with the lab to decide which tests, for which genes or gene-drug pairs, will be most helpful for their patients, she says. “Especially if you’re going to start incorporating clinical support alerts into the EHR,” adds Dr. Moyer, who was chair of (until Dec. 31; she is now advisor to) the CAP/ACMG Biochemical and Molecular Genetics Committee. “If the practice doesn’t actually want them, then you’re just going to end up annoying them.”
The who, when, and why of thrombophilia testing
January 2024—Thrombophilia testing has been shown to be performed far more often than indicated in thromboembolic events, at significant cost to the patient and hospital.
Lab-developed test proposal reflections and predictions
January 2024—The Food and Drug Administration’s proposed rule on laboratory-developed tests would phase out its existing enforcement discretion approach for oversight of LDTs. Instead, the FDA would classify in vitro diagnostics offered as LDTs as class I, II, or III medical devices depending on their risk to patients.
A scan of studies on HER2-low breast cancer scoring
January 2024—Much has been said and written about scoring HER2-low breast cancer, and it has its difficulties. But there are steps and tools to support scoring, and Savitri Krishnamurthy, MD, last fall shined a light on them and several HER2-low breast cancer-related studies.
7 pointers for POC cardiac troponin measurement
January 2024—Seven recommendations for the use of cardiac troponin measurement at the point of care were published last year and reported in a session at the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine annual meeting, shortly after the recommendations appeared in print.
Panelists on viscoelastic and other coag assays
January 2024—Viscoelastic assays and other coagulation tests were front and center when CAP TODAY publisher Bob McGonnagle on Nov. 20 convened seven people in an online roundtable. Oksana Volod, MD, and Eric Salazar, MD, PhD, and five company representatives weighed in on, among other things, appropriate test use, automation, and laboratory-developed tests. What they said begins here.
And the band neutrophil counts play on
December 2023—The recent CAP proficiency testing questionnaire was meant to be the coup de grâce. Hematology PT participants were asked about their band neutrophil reporting practices and, given that these manually generated counts were supposedly on their way out decades ago, the authors of the survey questionnaire expected to see very little activity. The survey, they hoped, would be a way to pound the final, data-driven nail in the coffin. Or, as lead author Maria (Ria) Vergara-Lluri, MD, puts it, “We thought this had all been laid to rest 30 years ago.” It wasn’t. Says Dr. Vergara-Lluri: “Surprise: 86 percent of labs that participated still report bands.” The results of the survey upended many of the assumptions, if not hopes, the authors might have had. Among laboratories that reported manual differentials, they found that most reported bands (4,554 of 5,268). Moreover, only 73 percent reported band reference ranges. On the morphologic challenge, bands classified as “easy” were indeed easy—participants classified them well.
In fee schedule final rule, lower cuts than proposed
December 2023—In the 2024 Medicare physician fee schedule final rule, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reacted favorably to the CAP’s advocacy to mitigate payment decreases to pathologists next year. Overall, payments to pathologists are expected to decrease by an estimated 2.7 percent.