What Is A Medical Laboratory
A medical laboratory or also known as a clinical laboratory is a laboratory where the tests for the clinical specimens will took place in order to get the information on the health of a patient. Clinical laboratories focus on applied science mainly on the production-like basis not like the research laboratories that focus on basic science on an academic basis.
Laboratory medicine is usually divided into two departments and each of the department will be divided into a number of units. You can read more about the two departments below.
Anatomic pathology – this department will include cytopathology, electron microscopy, and histopathology. Each of those units can be studied alone in a single course, try checking this page. The other courses related to this section are histology, pathophysiology, pathology, and physiology.
Clinical pathology that includes the following:
Clinical microbiology – this course surrounds five various units of science. The units included here are mycology, immunology, parasitology, virology, and bacteriology.
Clinical chemistry: the units included in this section are enzymology, endocrinology, toxicology, and the instrumental analysis of blood components.
Hermatology – this units that are under this section are the manual and automated analysis of blood cells. The blood bank and the coagulation are the other subunits included in this section.
Genetics is studied also alongside a subspecialty which is the cytogenetics.
Reproductive biology – assisted reproductive technology, semen analysis, and sperm bank are in this section.
You should know that it would vary from different places when it comes to the distribution of clinical laboratories in different health centers. An example for this is that some health institutions will have one lab intended for microbiology while some will not have a lab for microbiology but will have different labs for each unit.
You can find a detailed analysis on the responsibilities of the laboratory equipment for urinalysis and hermatology in this website.
You should take note of the clinical specimen that can be received by microbiology like the possible infected tissues, urine, synovial fluid, sputum, blood, cerebrospinal fluid, feces, and swabs. That main task here involves the main concern with cultures, looking for the possible pathogens that will be identified more based on biochemical tests if found. A sensitivity test will also be done in order to know if the pathogen is resistant or sensitive to a prescribed medicine, simply check this company. The determined organism or organisms and the type and amount of medication that will be prescribed to the patient will be given together with the result.
Different types of medical laboratories
In a lot of countries, most of the medical specimens will be processed in two main medical laboratories. Hospitals have hospital laboratories where the tests for the patients will be done. The samples from health clinics, general practitioners, clinical research sites, and insurance companies will be analyzed in private laboratories. Read more here about medical laboratories in different websites in the internet.
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