Abused Inhalants Testing
Diverse Substances and Complex Procedures Challenge Laboratories
By Michael Wagner, PhD, Kim Manlove, and Thomas Andrew, MD
Inhalants continue to present significant health risks—but in a new twist, more adults are engaging in this behavior once thought to be predominantly adolescent in nature.
Alcohol Abuse
How Useful Are Fingernails for
Monitoring Long-term Exposure?
By Joseph T. Jones, MS, NRCC-TC
Meconium drug-testing in twins and triplets doesn’t often result in mismatches. When they do occur, discrepancies can frequently be explained by medications administered to one infant but not the other, separate placentas, or low drug concentrations around screening test cutoffs. These authors compared multiple birth meconium test results from a four-year period in a large national reference laboratory dataset and in a smaller dataset from an academic medical center.
Hip Replacement
Metal Toxicity Risks
Patients with Metal Implants
May Need to Be Monitored
By Michael A. Wagner, PhD
With the aging population’s increase in degenerative
joint disease, the demand for surgical implants of
prosthetic devices continues to grow. Injured veterans
returning from deployments in the Middle East
constitute another important patient population requiring
prosthetic joint replacement.