Thursday July 2, 2026
Laboratory Management – Westgard Rules Application in Quality Control
Transcript
Elizabeth McMahon
What James Westgard wanted. A CAP course gives you what you need to know about the quality control rules that bear his name. Plus, red, white, and Prussian blue? The history of a pigment and an essential lab stain. This is Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Thursday, July 2nd. It's the question at the heart of every lab test, no matter what the result. Is this correct? Patients depend on labs to provide accurate, reproducible results, and pathologists depend on strict quality control measures, often known as the Westgard rules. The rules are named after chemist James Westgard, who is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. He created them in 1981, and they are now integral to all CAP accredited labs. They are also the focus of this month's featured clinical pathology improvement program, or CPIP course. Dr. William Winter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, leads the course.
Dr. William Winter
What Westgard wanted to do is make sure that if the certainty is high that the run has worked, we want to release the result to the physician so that she or he can act on that result as soon as possible.
Elizabeth McMahon
The CPIP course will review basic quality control rules and help pathologists recognize, classify, and remedy failures. Often those quality control failures can be easily remedied, Dr. Winter says.
Dr. William Winter
What Westgard wanted to do is to uh minimize the number of runs that were uh that had to be repeated, because that's time and money. And they both they both matter to patients and they matter to the healthcare institution. On the other hand, there's a huge need to have a result that is sufficiently close to the true result that it won't interfere in making the correct diagnosis or management decisions.
Elizabeth McMahon
Learn about the CPIP course and the CME credits available at the clinical pathology section at education.cap.org. There are just a few more days to make your voice heard about the proposed CAP guideline on race in prenatal screening. Maternal race has historically been used for prenatal serum screening for fetal genetic conditions such as Down syndrome. But recent evidence challenges the validity of incorporating race, highlighting concerns about disease misclassification and the potential for bias. An expert-led CAP panel has developed five draft statements, including three conditional recommendations and two good practice statements. They reflect a shift toward more consistent, evidence-based approaches. Go to the upcoming CAP guidelines tab to review and make comments by July 9th. There are new insights about one of the most common and deadliest brain cancers. Glioblastoma is hard to treat because it evades and suppresses the body's immune response. Now, a study led by pathologists at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine has uncovered a receptor that helps glioblastoma evade immune cells. The receptor changes tumor macrophages, specialized immune cells that usually digest pathogens. It puts the macrophages into an immunosuppressive state. The researchers discovered the pathway where this change begins and blocked it in mice, reducing immune suppression and extending the mice's survival. The researchers next plan to target the pathway and use therapies that boost immune response. The study is in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. And finally, what's red, white, and Prussian blue all over? A lot more than the liver slides under your microscope. The ubiquitous lab stained pigment changed the world, according to a recent article in the Pathologist magazine. It started as a mixing mistake in a Berlin pigment maker's workshop in 1706. But Prussian blue revolutionized the art world, becoming a global commodity by the mid-18th century. In 1867, a young German pathologist named Max Pearls created Prussian blue inside cells where iron was present. Since then, the pigment has been a mainstay for evaluating iron and liver pathology and even has therapeutic applications. That's all for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. We'll be taking tomorrow off in celebration of Independence Day. We'll be back on Monday, July 6th. Got a story you'd like us to cover on the Daily Edition? Write to us at stories at cap.org. See you Monday at 5 a.m. for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.