Different tests in clinical laboratories

You all may want to take some time and rethink about the purpose of conducting the tests in the clinical laboratories before posting it in the blogs. While reading through some of the blogs, I realised that some students don't understand the purpose of performing some tests.

The key main function of clinical laboratory is to assist physicians to make diagnosis with patients' clinical presentation, and also manage the disease after or during treatment. Thus, not all tests are soley for diagnostic purpose. All of you may want to state the key function of the test.

In future postings, please follow the guidelines below:
1. Clinical presentation - indicate the signs and symptoms that patient may have
2. Samples - type of samples to collect (plain or with additives)
3. Tests - what is the objective of performing this test (screening for disease, diagnosis of disease or management of disease)
4. Interpretation - how do you interpret the test result (provide reference ranges to enable understanding)
5. Confirmatory tests - type of test to be done if interpretation of test conducted is invalid
6. Final diagnosis or conclusion - provide if any.

Please refer to LMQA module in blackboard (ole) for the case-based learning template.