XVI Congress of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine and IV EFCC Symposium

9th July 2008 - XVI Congress of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine was held in Belgrade in the period between 17th and 21st June 2008 and was organised by the Association of Medical Biochemists of Serbia. Furthermore, international representatives took part in this Congress that was sponsored by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry (IFCC), European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFCC) and Balkan Clinical Laboratory Federation (BCLF), and the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia.

IV EFCC Symposium for the Balkan region was held as a part of the Congress.

Plenary sessions of the Congress were dedicated to the latest knowledge in the area of biochemical markers of different diseases. During the section of the Congress entitled “Implementation of quality indicators in medical laboratories” current issues in the area of quality establishment and maintenance in medical laboratories were presented such as reliability of results, errors in laboratory medicine, and dilemmas and controversies over interpretation of laboratory results. The results that are achieved in this area present a mirror image of verification performed by means of accreditation, while activities to introduce a new standard typical of medical laboratories were presented by Ljubinka Gligić, PhD, a Senior Adviser with the Accreditation Board of Serbia, in her paper entitled “Status of Accreditation Development and Implementation of Medical Laboratories in Serbia” published in JMB 27: 144-147, 2008.

Within the IV EFCC Symposium for the Balkan region entitled “Influence of pre-analytical phase on the quality of laboratory results” a larger number of international and local lecturers concluded that the greatest number of laboratory errors occur during the pre-analytical phase of testing mostly for the reasons involving educational and organisational issues. For this reason modern trends in clinical laboratory practice relate to the improvements in the quality of pre-analytical phase.