June 2013 CFTN

Read the June 2013 Issue

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.