Recognizing Our Staff during Laboratory Professionals Week

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 12:44:00 -0700

Medical Laboratory Professionals Week (MLPW) is a chance to bring awareness and to spotlight the achievements of medical laboratory professionals, whose work is essential to patient testing and fundamental to overall patient health care. There are 18 national organizations that sponsor MLPW, with approximately 300,000 practitioners of clinical laboratory science in the United States (http://www.ascls.org).

These organizations are dedicated to making a positive impact in health care through leadership that will assure excellence in the practice of laboratory medicine. Many laboratories plan tours and various other activities during this week to educate non-laboratorians about the field of clinical testing.

This year MLPW falls from April 22-28 and as we do every year, ZRT will be celebrating our laboratory staff, those folks who are committed to working hard every day to ensure that our testing is performed efficiently and is of the highest quality.

We celebrate this week with a variety of activities to show appreciation for the lab team – the dedicated technicians who work behind the scenes to perform critical testing every day. Often, departments throughout ZRT take turns providing treats for the laboratory on a designated day during the week. We also plan games and activities that allow the company to get to know the lab team better. This has been in the form of a scavenger hunt or a type of “guess the lab member” questionnaire and, as always, there are prizes. At ZRT, we like to end the week of celebration by having a group outing to include the entire laboratory department, which includes the specimen processing team who are vital to getting your samples logged in and passed to the lab for testing shortly after arriving in the mail.

During this annual celebratory week, we want to recognize how important our laboratory team is to ZRT as well as have some fun. The celebration is made even more special by the fact that the whole company participates. Recognizing our skilled lab professionals for their efforts is just a part of ZRT’s overall commitment to our customers and reflects the value we place on providing accurate and meaningful testing to benefit patients.

Related Resources

Vitamin D: What Level is Normal vs Optimal?

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 12:28:00 -0800

If you have ever had your level of Vitamin D tested, depending on which lab you used, your report showing whether your level is low, normal, or high might have left you scratching your head. In fact, there are multiple agencies all with slightly different opinions on what levels are deficient, insufficient, sufficient, high, or toxic.

When testing with ZRT, you will receive a result that is reflective of your total 25-Hydroxy Vitamin D status (vitamin D2 plus Vitamin D3) in blood. This is the storage form of vitamin D, which is converted by the kidneys to the biologically active form, 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol.

Vitamin D3 is involved in numerous biological processes such as immune system modulation, insulin sensitivity, hormone and neurotransmitter homeostasis, and is essential for ensuring calcium absorption in the bones. Dietary sources of vitamin D include foods such as cow’s milk, fish, egg yolk, and pork. Sunlight exposure and supplements are two other main sources of vitamin D that will contribute to reaching an optimal vitamin D status for health. Those of you who are not living in a sunny climate year-round will be hard-pressed to maintain a healthy level of vitamin D by relying on sunlight alone.

Reference Range

The reference range, a term often used in conjunction with laboratory testing, is a set of values that include the upper and lower limits of a lab test based on a group of otherwise healthy individuals. For a laboratory to determine the appropriate reference range for their testing population, often hundreds to thousands of normal, healthy patients are tested. To date, ZRT has tested over 60,000 patients to assess their vitamin D levels. When looking at the patient results, we determined that the majority of patients tested have total vitamin D levels between 20 and 80 ng/mL; that is, 86% of patients tested fall within this range. Based on years of patient testing and data analysis, we have updated our laboratory report reference range to reflect that values between 20-80 ng/mL are representative of a normal patient population.

Normal versus Optimal

Based on years of patient testing and data analysis, we have updated our laboratory report reference range to reflect that values between 20-80 ng/mL are representative of a normal patient population.

This raises the issue: is normal the same thing as optimal? Not necessarily. The Vitamin D Council places the ideal level between 40 and 80 ng/mL with levels below 20 ng/mL as deficient. The Endocrine Society has a Clinical Practice Guideline on the evaluation, treatment, and prevention of vitamin D deficiency. This guideline recommends a minimum vitamin D level of 20 ng/mL, but to guarantee sufficiency they recommend between 30 and 50 ng/mL for both children and adults. In contrast, the Vitamin D Council states that even levels between 30 and 40 ng/mL are still not quite sufficient. On the other end of the spectrum, results that fall between 80 and 100 ng/mL are not achievable naturally; that is, they are only reached with some form of vitamin D supplementation. So, while they are not harmful levels, they are instead reflective of supplementation and therefore not what would be detected in a "normal" patient population.

So, what does it mean if your test result falls within ZRT’s updated reference range of 20 to 80 ng/mL? It means that your result is normal within the testing population, but if you are at the lower end of the range it may not be sufficient for optimal vitamin D status. According to most standards, sufficient values for vitamin D are between 30 and 60 ng/mL. For those with chronic conditions like diabetes, autoimmune disease, or cancer, it’s not unusual for a provider to target a vitamin D level higher than the typical sufficient range. Whatever your number and health status, work with your provider to achieve the optimal level for you, through supplementation, nutrition, or getting more sun exposure. Your choice! When in doubt, give our ZRT Clinical Consultants a call and they can help walk you through the ever-evolving and sometimes conflicting data regarding ideal vitamin D levels.

The ZRT Laboratory Blog

Recognizing Our Staff during Laboratory Professionals Week

Related Resources

Vitamin D: What Level is Normal vs Optimal?

Normal versus Optimal

Based on years of patient testing and data analysis, we have updated our laboratory report reference range to reflect that values between 20-80 ng/mL are representative of a normal patient population.

Related Resources