New analyser for Vaiola Hospital laboratory [1]
Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - 23:37. Updated on Thursday, August 9, 2018 - 09:47.
A new biochemistry analyser that will allow tests to be done in Tonga instead of being sent overseas was received at the laboratory in Vaiola Hospital, on Monday August 6.
This is the first of its kind in Tonga, and the latest analyser that Roche Diagnostic have put out called E411.
Dr Seventeen Toumo’ua said now they could locally run tests that are usually referred to New Zealand and reduce the cost of overseas tests. But most important, is the turn around time for better management of patients here in Tonga, he said.
Tests includes cardiac markers for diagnosing myocardial infarction or heart attack and tumor markers which are molecules in the blood that are higher when a person has certain cancers like Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) for prostate cancer, Alpha Fetoprotein (AFP) in cases with liver cancer and germ cell cancers. Other tests include thyroid function test for thyroid stimulating hormone, thyroid hormone (T3 and T4) for people suffering with hyper or hypothyroidism and for thyroid cancers. Pregnancy blood tests can also be done to confirm pregnancy, abnormal pregnancies and so forth.
Dr Toumo'ua said the turn around time for these tests is a minimum of three to four weeks as their tests are added on to the workload of Labplus, which is the lab they use in New Zealand.
"Doing these tests locally, the results are available on the same day depending on the urgency of it for example troponin can be within an hour from time of taking the blood to processing to availability of results," he said.
“It is a hope that when the need arises we will be able to expand into new tests needed like Hepatitis A, fertility testing, rubella and many others, which we will consider once we look at the cost effective of doing it locally then to refer.”
In the meantime, an accreditation process is currently running at the lab, which is an audit done by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ), the accreditation body of the Testing Laboratory Registration Council in New Zealand.
The analyser was provided as part of the New Zealand funded Pacific Laboratory Quality Assurance Activity, delivered by the Pacific Paramedical Training Centre which aims to help Pacific laboratory progress towards international accreditation.
Histology equipment, including a tissue processor, a paraffin bath and microtome, were also donated to Vaiola by various New Zealand laboratories.