1 Jul 2022
In the effort to provide improved patient care and outcomes, hematology wards often require a high volume of samples to be turned around quickly, whilst still ensuring confidence in the results. In this video, Gary Tye, senior biomedical scientist at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, highlights the integral role of reliable slide staining and centrifugation technology in enabling the production of blood films, bone marrows, and cytospins in a standardized fashion, quicker than previous manual methods.
My name is Gary Tye. I'm a senior biomedical scientist, and I work at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.
The hematology lab is responsible for processing all the full blood count samples, and other hematological samples for the hospital and the GP services. Linked to the hospital, we have a tertiary leukemia unit which is responsible for treating all the patients within the Lancashire and Cumbria area, who have hematological malignancies.
The Aerospray, we use for staining blood films, bone marrow samples, CSF cytospins, fluid white counts, and we can also do malaria slides on them. The hematology ward requires urgent samples turned around quickly, and we can use the blood films to monitor blast counts which will look at the treatment of the cancer patients to ensure that the treatment that they're on is appropriate.
The Aerospray allows us to produce blood films, bone marrows, and cytospins in a standardized fashion. It's much, much quicker than our previous manual methods. The slides, when they are produced, are crystal clear, and effectively high-definition, which allows us to interpret the films correctly, and it can lead to treatment options for the hematology unit.
The Aerospray is going to allow us to produce the blood films in a timely manner. This would be advantageous to the patients. Anything that speeds up their treatment will be a benefit, and at the end of the day, patient care is what we're here for.
The Aerospray, we're quite happy with the technology. Maybe, in the future, we could look at a bigger model that could allow us to stain more films at once. We could also look at potentially getting the cytospin option which would allow us to do our own cytospins within the laboratory. Once technology improves, we will be looking to move on to bigger and better equipment, maybe tracking systems.
Anything that would speed up the process of samples through the laboratory and that would lead to improved patient outcomes is something we would be extremely interested in.
Blackpool Victoria Hospital
With 33 years’ experience working within pathology, Gary Tye is a senior biomedical scientist working at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, UK. Blackpool Victoria Hospital is a medium-sized general hospital with specialities in cardiac medicine and supports a tertiary haematological malignancy unit. This unit deals with acute and chronic cases for the Lancashire and Cumbria region of the UK. Gary is also a Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Scientists (FIBMS).