During the doctors consultation clinical observations are made from which a range of pathology tests may be ordered to ensure the best clinical decisions are made about your health, from diagnosis through to therapy, care plans, and prognosis.
Approximately 70% of all medical diagnoses are dependent upon pathology testing.
The doctor decides the most appropriate pathology tests to be performed; these tests will require certain types of samples to be collected from your body. The specimen you provide might be a small amount of a body fluid, such as blood, saliva, semen, or urine, or a sample of stool or hair. Doctors may collect some specimens, the laboratory can collect others.
Any pathology investigation starts with one or more specimens obtained from the patient.
The patients' specimens are then transported via regular couriers back to the laboratory. Patient details are cross checked against accompanying request slips. Patient demographics are entered from the request slip into a secure computer system and linked with the tests requested and the barcode. Specimens are then prepared, sorted and given to relevant specialized departments for analysis. The tube label contains all the information necessary to ensure that the sample is analysed for all the tests requested and the results are matched to your name.
The major specialized departments within pathology are:
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Anatomical Pathology [Histopathology / Cytopathology] (the diagnosis of disease from examining tissue samples and cellular smears)
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Chemical Pathology (the use of chemical analysis to test tissue, blood and body fluid samples)
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Haematology (the testing of blood, blood cells and blood products)
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Immunopathology (the examination of tissue, blood and body fluid samples for immune responses associated with disease)
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Microbiology (the study of microscopic organisms in tissue, blood and body fluids)
Each department following analysis of the specimen will validate every result. This may involve a pathologist’s interpretation. This result is then put into a report containing all your results for this particular episode and sent through to your doctor electronically or by hard copy. The doctor will use these results to make accurate decisions about the diagnosis and treatment of their patients.