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Special Features:
This component of our operation performs tests on blood, urine, feces, other body fluids, and cultures from any body site. It also provides blood and blood products for transfusion.
Autologous Transfusion Service: Begun in 1989, this continues to be the only in-hospital program in the midlands and one of the few in South Carolina. This service allows a patient to donate his/her own blood for their own planned future use.
Reference Laboratory Testing: Since 1971 we have maintained relationships with specialty laboratories all over the USA so that quality testing, for unusual tests, is rapidly available by overnight air transport. Lexington Medical Laboratories (LML), locally owned, provides a high percentage of our specialty testing, having been transferred from Chicago to West Columbia in 1984 by Dr. and Mrs. Carter.
Patient-Requested Laboratory Testing: Our Laboratory initiated this service in 1986, the first medical laboratory in South Carolina to do so. All patient requested lab testing is done within the fully accredited LMC Laboratories under the supervision of LMC's Clinical Pathologists. As commercial vendors, "Do-it-yourself" tests, and Internet-marketed out-of-state testing have become more prevalent, we have expanded this healthcare service into our Lab Tests On-Demand Program. The service is presented to LMC's community so that self-requested tests can be readily available at the same high quality of technical and professional standards with which Lexington Medical Center's Laboratory Service operates. An informational brochure is available and testing sites are located at LMC's Community Medical Centers in Lexington and Irmo and at LMC's Occupational Health Service on
West Dunbar Road.
For more information please call 803-791-2213.
Emergency Services Support: Beginning in 1971, LMC was the first hospital in South Carolina to have its own full-time staff of ER doctors. Now, having the 3rd busiest ER in South Carolina, our lab continues to emphasize rapid, accurate, 24 hour per day centralized lab support for our ER, Operating Rooms, and Intensive Care Unit.
Transfusion Alternatives: In hopes of often avoiding the need for a patient to receive anyone else’s blood, the above autologous program was supplemented in 1992 with a cell-saver program, and in 1995 with intra-operative hemodilution.
Hemochromatosis Service: Patients diagnosed with iron-overload disorders benefit from our coordinated phlebotimization program, actively treating patients since 1996. Link to Dr. Shaw's web site with information regarding Iron Deficit or Overload.
Inpatient Early Testing Program: Rather than be constrained by the limits of the classical 3 shifts of a work day, in 1990 our lab became the first in the Southeast to break this paradigm and maintain a goal of 85% of a day’s tests completed and reported by 8:00 a.m.
Acute MI Testing: Since 1980 our lab has emphasized rapid lab testing to both make the diagnosis or rule out the diagnosis of acute MI. Because referrals must be quickly made for angioplasty or open-heart surgery from such a busy ER, we have continually been first in the midlands for availability of leading-edge STAT tests 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. In the last few years, this has also been important so that the potentially dangerous "clot buster" drugs be given only to those who need it.
Acute Infectious Disease, Rapid Diagnosis: Dr. and Mrs. Carter were College of American Pathologists annual-meeting national course directors on serological techniques in auto-immune and acute infectious disease testing from 1974 to 1984. They invented the acute infection test for Mycoplasm pneumoniae. They founded a very successful rapid testing laboratory during their decade in Chicago. That expertise was transferred to LMC when they joined us in 1984 and opened LML in 1987. Independently owned, LML has been able to implement new tests (such as free PSA, PCR, fetal fibrinectin) far ahead of the usual pace, sometimes transferring the new expertise into the LMC lab. It’s charges to LMC being set at or lower than those of giant, membership purchasing cooperatives available to LMC, this lab has operated essentially as a not-for-profit lab while offering same-day services and locally
coordinated testing.
Lab Newsletter: Beginning in 1985, a periodic letter has been regularly internally produced and issued to the LMC doctors to help keep them informed of new testing protocols.
DIF Skin Biopsy Studies: The only midlands lab (LML), and one of the few in S. C., able to do these special skin studies. AND, we have done this since this since 1985 as emergency tests for patients with awful, blistering, emergency skin conditions so that a correct choice can be made to use, or not to use, certain powerful medications.
DIF/IF Autoimmune testing: On the foundation of the Carter’s expertise, our lab offers an unexcelled level of expertise in S.C. for this testing for such diseases as lupus at LML. |
