Special Hematology Laboratory

The Special Hematology Laboratory, presently located in Bellevue Hospital, is part of the Bellevue Division of Laboratories directed by Maria Aguero-Rosenfeld, M.D.

The laboratory provides services for patients at Bellevue and five other New York Health and Hospital Corporation hospitals. It also provides services for Tisch patients under the Affiliation Contract. The activities of the laboratory consist of:

Patient Service

The Mission of the laboratory is to study abnormalities of red cells and hemostasis using state of the art equipment and methodology.

A large menu of analytes is offered either as single tests or as panels. The Directors and Supervisor are very available by email and telephone to help clinicians in the interpretation of test results.

Teaching

The laboratory receives a large and varied volume of samples. For example, detection and identification of abnormal hemoglobins is carried out by high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and an average of 350 patients are tested each week.

This coupled with the ethnic diversity of the patients provides an abundance of teaching material. The volume of other tests performed is comparable.

Trainees from numerous programs spend time in the lab including Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Medical Hematology, Clinical Pathology, and the New York Blood Center.

They are introduced to the methodology of laboratory hematology; they consult on patients being tested and meet with the Directors and the Supervisor for regular and ad hoc teaching.

Research

The test volume and the large test menu are a valuable resource for clinical research, often but not exclusively designed to improve methodology. For example, recent publications from the lab have demonstrated that confirmatory testing of abnormal hemoglobins by electrophoresis is frequently unnecessary.

This confirmation which is costly and time consuming, is the standard of care recommended by the American College of Pathologists. Ongoing studies are focused on lupus anticoagulants and on platelet functional defects.