The laboratory is a medical-technical service with a supporting but essential function at the service of doctors, patients and paramedics at UZ Brussel and beyond. Clinical chemistry is a discipline within the Laboratory Medicine which performs chemical analysis on various bodily fluids (essentially blood) so as to aid doctors in confirming, discarding or predicting a diagnosis for a wide variety of medical conditions.  

Depending on the type, the evolution of the disease, the efficiency of treatment and the risk of complications, it can also objectify the risk of complications or death. The range of analyses on offer, the main guidelines for sample retrieval and the structure of the laboratory’s activity may also be consulted from within and outside the hospital through an electronic laboratory guide. 

 

The department’s clinical biologists are available for advice to colleagues concerning the interpretation of results, effective testing and requests for eventual complementary research. Moreover, they provide structural advice on the dosage of certain medications, intoxications and the detection and follow-up of metabolic diseases. 

 

In terms of the laboratory’s general operation, the department’s medical staff supervises the blood sampling, the receipt and triage of patient samples, the appointments for sweat tests, the effective and safe transfer of electronic data containing lab results and the functioning of monitoring equipment used besides patients’ beds (point-of-care testing).

 

The clinical biologists (in training) are also responsible for the evaluation and implementation of new techniques, they are mandated to pursue an ever better and rapid service provision. Within a framework of cross-Departmental, structured cooperation with, among others, diabeticians, paediatricians, endocrinologists and gynaecologists, the department contributes towards  the conversion of test results into new developments and innovative clinical studies as well as treatments at the hospital.

The laboratory is constructed as a large central area, which serves as a unique platform where the most frequent and urgent haematological, clinical-chemical and immunological analyses are conducted, night and day, within the same work space. Requests for laboratory analysis are received electronically, processed and subsequently the relevant patient samples are sorted, centrifuged and – following the possible transfer of samples by an “intelligent conveyor belt” in automatically labelled ‘daughter tubes’ -   they are forwarded to the analysers for (mostly) automated or manual conduct of the requested tests. 

 

Following quality control and validation, the results are grouped per patient and forwarded electronically to the patient file. Besides such automated procedures, the laboratory also comprises a number of specialised, more labour-intensive units.

This includes the chromatography laboratory, where sophisticated separation techniques are applied to analyse biological fluids for abnormal traces of own or alien bodily substances (endogenous/extraneous), used notably in the study of metabolic diseases and intoxications. In addition, the immunoassay laboratory doses a full range of hormones and markers of cancers and diabetes through the use of specific antibodies as reactors.  This unit works closely with UZ Brussel’s centre for reproductive medicine and the VUB’s diabetes research centre (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), while serving as a reference lab for the Belgian Diabetes Register. The department also receives many requests from outside the hospital: these specialised analyses are often combined with medical advice to the requesting parties.