Coagulation testing: the view from Glan Clywd

Glan Clwyd Hospital in North Wales sits among some of the most stunning scenery in the UK. Unlike the surrounding hills and nearby Snowden, the local pathology department has seen continuous and significant changes in its coagulation laboratory.

Dave Parry is the head of department over the busy coagulation laboratory and reflects on the many changes in his laboratory and in the wider coagulation world: “My first Sysmex analyser was a CA-5000 some 21 years ago and the remarkable thing is that I was trained by Keith Howes, then a product specialist but now the managing director.”

The instrumentation market place looked very different in 1991, as Dave recalls: “Most laboratories were buying Instrumentation Laboratories analysers at the time as there were few alternatives, but the thing that drew us to Sysmex was the open reagent system and the true walkaway capability of the system. Open reagent systems are gone now, due to CE-marking and new legislation, but back then it was very important to us. Compared to the alternatives, the CA-5000 was the thinking man’s coagulometer.”