An interview with Judith Strachan and Andrew Deans from Ninewells Hospital Bringing calprotectin testing in-house has made a marked difference at NHS Tayside. From improving turnaround times to easing clinical decision-making, the shift to using the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo assay on the Siemens Atellica, combined with providing CALEX® tubes to their IBD patients, has changed…
There has been a big drive in recent years to reduce the environmental impact of the NHS – be that their direct (NHS Carbon footprint) or indirect carbon footprint (NHS Carbon footprint Plus which is emissions they can influence), or single use plastics. The aim is to reach net zero for the direct carbon footprint…
Addenbrooke’s Hospital at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (CUH) have been using the BÜHLMANN calprotectin assays for a number of years. They initially used the fCAL® ELISA and the CALEX on a DS2 analyser, but switched technology in December 2018 to the BÜHLMANN fCAL turbo on their Siemens Advia 2400. More recently (2022) the assay…
Claire Paterson is Chief Biomedical Scientist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where she leads the Routine Automation Team in the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory. Within the last year, the team there has implemented a number of changes to improve their calprotectin testing service. Claire talks to Amanda Appleton, Senior Product Manager, about how things have moved on.…
Amanda Appleton, Senior Product Manager, Alpha Laboratories Ltd., caught up with Dr Arne Roseth, a pioneer in the adoption of calprotectin testing for diagnosing and monitoring inflammatory bowel diseases. Dr Arne Roseth, a Norwegian gastroenterologist who is now semi-retired, has more than 25 years’ experience in calprotectin testing and its applications. He was himself diagnosed…
University of Edinburgh Easter Bush School and Hospital for Small Animals The University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Clinical Pathologists and Hospital for Small Animals’ Specialists in Internal Medicine, have validated the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo assay for use on their Beckman analyser. The test has now been made available by the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary…
A New Era at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was established in February 2000 and is the largest acute hospital trust in the South East of England. Dave Parris and Yolanda Price from the Blood Sciences department talk about their experience evolving their calprotectin testing service. “Switching from…
An interview with Prof. Dr. Patrick van Rheenen University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands Can you introduce yourself and your organization? My name is Patrick van Rheenen and I work at the University Medical Centre in Groningen (the Netherlands). I am a clinical researcher into paediatric inflammatory bowel disease. How did you choose IBDoc® for…
Alison Jones, Consultant Clinical Biochemist, York and Scarborough NHS Foundation Trust It is well documented that liquid/watery stool samples should not be tested for faecal elastase due to the risk of a false low result suggesting pancreatic insufficiency (a false positive). This is not a failure of the assay – it works in exactly the…
Dr Peter Rimmer, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham We are all very familiar with the use of faecal calprotectin testing to help distinguish inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) from functional disorders, and it has become a staple tool to support the clinical teams in their diagnosis and management of patients. If a negative faecal calprotectin result…
Ailsa Ralph, NHS Trainee Clinical Scientist With the onset of COVID one of the big challenges faced by many hospitals was having sufficient access to biosafety cabinets for sample handling, due to the unknown infection risk from viral RNA which could be detected in the samples. Many hospitals had to prioritise which samples/tests would be…
Kezia Allen, Associate Practitioner – Clinical Trials, Basildon Hospital The demands on healthcare resources continue to escalate, with the COVID pandemic having exacerbated the existing pressures from an aging population living longer and with more complex health conditions. Changes to traditional practices are essential if healthcare services are to keep pace with the increased demands.…
Switching to the new fPELA turbo assay for improved workflow and efficiency Kaleem Fayyaz, Blood Sciences Team Leader, Spire Manchester Hospital Spire Healthcare is a leading UK independent hospital group. It delivers high standards of care to insured, self-pay and NHS patients across 39 hospitals and 8 clinics. The laboratories at Spire Manchester Hospital provide…
From the Siemens Advia 2400 to the Atellica Analyser Georgette Glover, Senior Biomedical Scientist, Biochemistry Department, Addenbrookes Hospital Addenbrookes Hospital has been using the BÜHLMANN calprotectin assays for a number of years. They initially employed the fCAL® ELISA with the CALEX® sample extraction device, processed on a Dynex DS2 automated system. However, in December 2018…
An interview with Yvonne Schallberger, Bioanalytica, Lucerne, Switzerland Mrs. Schallberger decided to introduce the BÜHLMANN fPELA® turbo Test, that measures in random access as well as in batch mode the faecal pancreatic elastase in a minimum time of 10 minutes. This can be done on most clinical chemistry analysers on the market. Mrs. Schallenberger, what…
Testimonial from Angela Suter and Dr. Cyril Fuhrer, Synlab Suisse SA, Lucerne, Switzerland You are successfully performing routine faecal calprotectin measurements with the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo Assay on the Beckman Coulter AU 5800. What are your experiences with applying a CALEX® Cap faecal extract onto a high throughput analyser in your routine? The test is…
A report from Dr. Marc-Antoine Bagnoud*, Dianalabs in Geneva, Switzerland Dianalabs is a mid-sized private lab founded in 1988 in Geneva, Switzerland, and part of the large swiss lab network Medisupport group with a total of 900 employees. Dr. Marc- Antoine Bagnoud, laboratory director of clinical chemistry at Dianalabs talked with us about the successful…
Jacqui McGuire and Neil Syme, Consultant Clinical Biochemists, Department of Biochemistry, Monklands Hospital NHS Lanarkshire, to the east of Glasgow, is the third largest NHS Health Board in Scotland. It serves 655,000 people at the Hairmyres, Wishaw and Monklands Hospitals. Faecal calprotectin testing for the diagnosis and monitoring of inflammatory bowel diseases is conducted at…
COVID has caused many changes in our day to day lives, with freedom and services intermittently restricted as the infection rates surge and abate. This pattern has also been evident in our healthcare system as we have previously reported to you. A UK on-line survey in 2020 of 125 hospitals (Kennedy et al. Frontline Gastroenterology)…
Bristol Zoo Gardens is a conservation and education charity founded by Henry Riley, a local physician and is the fifth oldest zoo in the world. It first opened its doors on 11th July 1836 and has since helped to save 175 species from extinction through breeding programmes and has established over 30 field conservation and…
Launched in summer 2020, the new BÜHLMANN fPELA turbidimetric immunoassay for faecal pancreatic elastase, complements the popular calprotectin fCAL turbo assay, that is widely used across the UK. Using the same CALEX faecal extraction device as the calprotectin assays and running on main-stream clinical chemistry analysers, the fPELA is set to improve workflow and turnaround…
Biochemical testing to support clinical decision making is essential, but certain analytes are still not routinely tested in-house. For these, patient samples are sent away to a referral laboratory for analysis or are stored and batch tested once or twice a week. This means that it can take several weeks before a result is available…
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic means many patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are identified as high-risk and need to shield. Thus, any opportunities to prevent the need for them to attend hospital, by offering an alternative for monitoring, should be adopted. Mid and South Essex University Hospital Trust (MSENHSFT) has a catchment population of 1.5…
Dr. Jörg Oliver Thumfart, Labormedizinisches Zentrum Dr. Risch The Medical Laboratory Center Dr. Risch is a privately owned group of routine medical laboratories with 14 competence centres across Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It was founded in 1970 by Dr. Gert Risch and is managed today by his sons, Lorenz and Martin Risch. Their core laboratories have…
Weighing the sample is still considered the Gold-Standard sample extraction method for calprotectin. However, this is a time consuming and inconvenient method. Providing very high correlation to the weighing extraction method, the BÜHLMANN CALEX® Cap is a stool extraction device containing a measured amount of extraction buffer. The features of the CALEX device are unique,…
By Laura Bernstone, Principal Clinical Scientist, Clinical Biochemistry at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust “Clinical Biochemistry at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is based on two main sites. We have busy 24/7 laboratories at both Darlington Memorial Hospital and University Hospital of North Durham, which are located around 25 miles apart.…
Accelerating Remote Patient Monitoring During the COVID-19 Pandemic Demands on healthcare resources continue to escalate as our aging population is living longer, often with more long-term health conditions. Changes to current practices are essential to help services keep up with the pressures placed upon them. Back in 2016, Simon Stevens (NHS England’s CEO) urged doctors,…
A report from Dr. Jörg Oliver Thumfart*, Labormedizinisches Zentrum Dr. Risch “We successfully introduced the automated, turbidimetric assay for fecal calprotectin, the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo, on our Roche cobas® c501 in Autumn 2019. The BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo replaced a classical ELISA assay. The main motivation for this change was to increase flexibility in planning lab…
In this humbling account, Rose Stanley, wife of long term Crohn’s sufferer Lee, shares her experiences of how, together, they tackle the daily challenges of living with the disease. It reminds us of why efficient monitoring, to help individuals manage the condition themselves, is so important. “Life is not dissimilar to what everyone has experienced…
The recent merger of clinical services across Basildon, Southend and Broomfield, now forms the Mid and South Essex University Hospital Trust with a catchment population of 1.5 million. The Gastroenterology Department deals with the diagnosis and on-going management of patients with IBD. Patients who are diagnosed need regular monitoring in case of relapse/flare, to ensure…
As you may have seen from the NEQAS reports, the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo calprotectin assay is proving very popular, and its use has grown significantly over the last few years. Some of these laboratories were already existing BÜHLMANN calprotectin assay users that have switched technologies from the Quantum Blue® rapid test or the fCAL ELISA.…
The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK, covering six hospitals. Elodie and her team in the department of blood sciences perform over 10 million tests each year, providing a service over two sites: the Freeman Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Previously they were using…
Lee Stanley, long term Crohn’s sufferer shares his experience of managing his disease with the help of calprotectin self-testing. “Having Crohn’s disease for twenty-seven years has taught me many things; fundamentally that patients need to self manage and IBDoc is one powerful tool in my self-managing tool kit. I wasn’t expecting IBDoc to provide me…
The Benefits for Patients and Healthcare Staff of Routine IBDoc® Use The Mercy University Hospital in Cork is a designated Gastroenterology Centre of Excellence and has one of the largest cohorts of IBD patients in Ireland. It was the first hospital to introduce the BÜHLMANN IBDoc® calprotectin patient self-testing into routine practice. This was back…
A Report of A. Suter* and Dr. C. Fuhrer** from SYNLAB *BMA HF/ Fachleiterin, **Head of Core Lab, FAMH Clinical Chemistry, NF hematology, microbiology and immunology; SYNLAB Suisse SA, Alpenquai 14, 6002 Lucerne, Switzerland “Handling and preparation of the fCAL® turbo assay on our chemistry analyser is faster and easier than before.” SYNLAB Suisse SA…
A Report of Martina Kobelt* and Karin Jung**, Zentrum für Labormedizin, KS St. Gallen, Switzerland *Senior Laboratory Technician Core Lab, **Deputy Head of Department Core Lab/FAMH Candidate Clinical Chemistry, Centre for Laboratory Medicine, Frohbergstrasse 3, 9001 St. Gallen, Switzerland “The handling of the new method is comparable to any other clinical chemistry assay.” The Centre…
Gastrointestinal/IBD Nurse of the Year 2018 introduces calprotectin home testing at her hospital. Pearl Avery of Dorset County Hospital NHS Trust has been awarded Gastrointestinal/IBD Nurse of the Year 2018 for her pioneering work to introduce a new IBD patient management system which has earned national recognition. It incorporates the IBD registry and the BÜHLMANN IBDoc calprotectin home test. In this article Pearl…
Follow the Evolution of Calprotectin Testing at James Cook University Hospital This interview with Mr Andrew Teggert, Clinical Scientist, James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, discusses recent changes made to the faecal calprotectin testing at the largest hospital in Tees Valley, which serves around 1.5 million patients. With a growing demand for calprotectin testing and the need for a wider…
Professor Russell Stothard and Dr Amaya Bustinduy Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Our article highlights ongoing work in Uganda measuring morbidity associated with intestinal schistosomiasis using faecal calprotectin tests. Our original study was as first reported in PLOS NTDs see http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0002542 Expanded access to point-of-care tests (POC) is important for…
At the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation, 13th Congress in Vienna in February 2018 Avery and Wilson of Dorset County Hospital Foundation Trust, Gastroenterology, Dorchester, UK presented the poster: IBDoc® Self-care/Point of care Calprotectin Test: Early Value in a District General Hospital Inflammatory Bowel Disease Service. This describes a study using the BÜHLMANN IBDoc® calprotectin test in comparison to a send…
Mary O’Connell née Deasy, Biochemistry Department, Mercy University Hospital, Cork In issue 2017-3 of Leading Edge, Mary O’Connell detailed her evaluation of the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo assay on the Abbott Architect C8000 analyser in comparison to the Phadia 250 ELiA™ Fluorenzyme-Immunoassay. Data was collected from 60 patient faecal samples that were tested for calprotectin concentrations using both methods. All 60 results from the…
Using IBDoc Faecal Calprotectin Testing Post Induction of anti-TNF Therapy G. Elsafi et al. Department of Gastroenterology, Mercy University Hospital, Cork At UEGW in Barcelona in October 2017 Dr. Elsafi and colleagues published a poster entitled “Cost effectiveness of IBDoc as a surrogate marker of mucosal healing in IBD patients post induction of biological agents” This poster described their study…
Mary O’Connell née Deasy, Biochemistry Department, Mercy University Hospital, Cork, Ireland The Mercy University hospital is one of the largest users of the IBDoc test, with almost 500 patients using the system to monitor their calprotectin levels. It was important to establish the comparative data between results from the patient self test and a laboratory based technology. Mary O’Connell in the…
Mary O’Connell née Deasy, Biochemistry Department Mercy University Hospital Cork, Ireland describes her experience introducing the BÜHLMANN fCAL turbo assay onto her department’s Abbott Architect C8000. At the Biochemistry Department at Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork we had been sending samples for faecal calprotectin testing away to a referral laboratory for analysis. This referral laboratory…
Turbo Charged from the Start Rosie Forster and Karen Smith, Clinical Biochemistry, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham introduce Faecal Calprotectin testing into their laboratory using the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo assay. Faecal calprotectin testing is used to help exclude inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in patients with lower gastrointestinal symptoms. This is extremely useful, as most patients with…
Interview with Anita Grünauer (BMA), Dr. Jasmin Barman-Aksözen (Head of Department Chemistry), and Predrag Nesic (Head of Department BMA Chemistry), Institute for Laboratory Medicine, City Hospital Triemli, Zurich …the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo assay eased our routine work in the laboratory tremendously and improved our service for senders: the results are reliable and match the clinical…
Interview with Mara Barbieru Deputy Senior Biomedical Analyst, Department of Clinical Chemistry and Biochemistry, Children’s Hospital of Zurich “For years, we had wanted to run Calprotectin in-house and now finally we can offer this.” Evaluating fCAL turbo – Beckman UniCel DxC 600 Mrs. Barbieru, the new calprotectin assay BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo yields calprotectin results in random access mode within 10 minutes, on…
Interview with Yvonne Schallberger, Bioanalytica Lucerne 2. BÜHLMANN fCAL turbo Evaluation “By introducing BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo we can finally provide the service the gastroenterologists of the St. Anna Hospital longed for, as well as improving the service of calprotectin determination for the resident doctors. Concerning the lab work, the introduction of the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo…
There has been much interest in the BÜHLMANN fCAL turbo faecal calprotectin assay since its UK launch in early 2016. With the increasing demand for faecal calprotectin tests there is a growing need for such a flexible, random access, high throughput assay that can be performed on clinical chemistry platforms. Clinicians need to be able to…
Pamela Bowe, Team Manager in the Department of Biochemistry at the Cumberland Infirmary describes her experience in evolving laboratory procedures and introducing BÜHLMANN fCAL turbo to cope with the growing number of faecal calprotectin test requests. Faecal Calprotectin is used in the differential diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is also used for monitoring…
Louise Asser, Specialist Biomedical Scientist at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital tells us about the work there, following up patients with a false positive calprotectin result. Using a pill-sized camera that the patient swallows, the team gets the inside story on what’s really going on. Previous studies that have assessed the diagnostic accuracy of calprotectin…
NEW User Report: Monitoring calprotectin concentrations is important as an indicator of disease activity, the effectiveness of treatment and to predict relapses in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
At the British Society of Gastroenterology Annual Meeting in Liverpool in June 2016, a poster was presented by a team from King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. They described the results of their recent pilot study with IBD patients performing faecal calprotectin home testing using the calprotectin self-testing kit IBDoc®. Faecal Calprotectin Home Testing- Read the…
As reported in the Daily Mail recently, misdiagnosis of IBS can have serious consequences. Read the full article The IBS Epidemic With one in ten people thought to be affected by irritable bowel syndrome is it the GP’s go to diagnosis for any patients presenting with gut pain, bloating and diarrhoea? IBS can be triggered by a bout of food…
Crohn’s sufferer Lee Stanley from Manchester writes about his experience of living with Crohn’s Disease for 25 years. Why he feels regular calprotectin testing is important, and the benefits that the introduction of the IBDoc calprotectin self-testing system will bring. “It’s a sad indictment of my recent health status, that the news of the launch…
Introduction Calprotectin is a heterodimer of calcium-binding proteins which belongs to the S-100 protein family. It is released from neutrophils and monocytes during cellular activation (or death) at sites of active inflammation, and accounts for upto 60% of the cytosolic protein in the granules of these cells. It is a highly stable protein, resists enzymatic…
As the Director of the UK NEQAS programme for Faecal Markers of Inflammation, I’m often asked why we sometimes see quite large differences between the Faecal Calprotectin results obtained by users of a single kit on the same homogenised external quality assessment (EQA) specimen. As is nearly always the case with such questions, there’s a…
22 April 2013: NTAC (NHS Technology Adoption Centre) have published a report reviewing Faecal Calprotectin which is a simple diagnostic test which can aid clinicians to more accurately identify those patients who have IBS and those who have a high probability of IBD, who will require urgent referral for specialist assessment. NTAC worked with sites…
In this case study, Arne Roseth reflects on a case last year where he met a patient who’d been wrongly diagnosed with IBS over 16 years ago. Last July I was reading through the list of referrals for a colonoscopy. One caught my immediate interest: A 32 year old woman, many years with IBS type…
Dr Sean Nugent, Consultant Gastroenterologist,of The Whitfield Clinic, Waterford, Ireland, talks to us about his introduction of the Quantum Blue Calprotectin Test into his clinic. Alpha Labs: Can you describe your clinical service at the Whitfield Clinic? Dr. Nugent: I run a full time private practice in Gastroenterology, upper and lower GI tract and liver…
Successful laboratory assays are usually dependent on the alignment of many elements and sometimes things do go wrong despite everyones best efforts! Nik Hawes and Julia Bond from the Biochemistry Department at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton recently encountered a problem with EK-CAL, their Calprotectin ELISA, when run on the DS2 ELISA processor.…
In autumn 2010, the Clinical Chemistry Dept at the Royal Berkshire Hospital decided to evaluate the Quantum Blue Calprotectin test. The reason was that their Calprotectin requests had grown sufficiently to warrant bringing the test in-house. Dr Tracey Staughton, Clinical Scientist, was responsible for the evaluation of the Quantum Blue system and her lab’s experience…