The use of liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been increasing in laboratory medicine. LC-MS/MS is routinely used in the fields of toxicology, endocrinology, microbiology, and various -omics fields such as proteomics, lipidomics, just to name a few.
If you’ve ever found yourself Googling troubleshooting tips for mass spectrometry, then attend the Past President’s session Wednesday, December 16 at 2:00 pm Central, “Mass Spectrometry Troubleshooting and Validation – Dealing with Your Daily Problems.” AACC Past President Carmen Wiley, PhD, organized this session in order to help laboratorians build or expand their peer networks, share best practices, and collectively troubleshoot LC-MS/MS issues.
This session provides “how-to” perspectives from Andrew Hoofnagle, MD, PhD, Brian Rappold, BS, and Russell Grant, PhD. Using an interactive format, the panel of experts provides information on how to deal with LC-MS/MS challenges experienced by session attendees.
Some of the topics covered at length are validation of a second instrument for an assay, how to deal with interference other than reporting an interfering substance, how to optimize assays, how to assess excessive carryover from oral fluids, how to assess ion suppression/enhancement, and tips on the most useful feature in LC-MS/MS for quality assurance.
There’s something for everyone as attendees of all experience levels will leave this session with greater confidence in their ability to develop, implement and fix LC-MS/MS assays in the clinical laboratory.