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Context.—: Errors in laboratory medicine could compromise patient safety. Good laboratory practice includes identifying and managing nonconformities in the total test process. Varying error percentages have been described in other fields but are lacking for molecular oncology., Objectives.—: To gain insight into incident causes and frequency in the total test process from 8 European institutes routinely performing biomarker tests in non-small cell lung cancer and colorectal cancer., Design.—: All incidents documented in 2018 were collected from all hospital services for pre-preanalytical entries before the biomarker test, as well as specific incidents for biomarker tests., Results.—: There were 5185 incidents collected, of which 4363 (84.1%) occurred in the pre-preanalytical phase (all hospital services), 2796 of 4363 (64.1%) related to missing or incorrect request form information. From the other 822 specific incidents, 166 (20.2%) were recorded in the preanalytical phase, 275 (33.5%) in the analytical phase, and 194 (23.6%) in the postanalytical phase, mainly due to incorrect report content. Only 47 of 822 (5.7%) incidents were recorded in the post-postanalytical phase, and 123 (15.0%) in the complete total test process. For 17 of 822 (2.1%) incidents the time point was unknown. Pre-preanalytical incidents were resolved sooner than incidents on the complete process (mean 6 versus 60 days). For 1215 of 5168 (23.5%) incidents with known causes a specific action was undertaken besides documenting them, not limited to accredited institutes., Conclusions.—: There was a large variety in the number and extent of documented incidents. Correct and complete information on the request forms and final reports are highly error prone and require additional focus.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the 2-year clinical outcomes of the Firehawk stent (Shanghai MicroPort Medical Group, Shanghai, China), a novel abluminal groove-filled biodegradable-polymer sirolimus-eluting coronary stent, compared with XIENCE (Abbott Vascular, Santa Clara, California), a durable-polymer everolimus-eluting coronary stent., Background: The long-term outcomes of the Firehawk stent have not been evaluated beyond 1 year in a randomized all-comers clinical trial., Methods: The TARGET All Comers study is a prospective, multicenter, all-comers, randomized, noninferiority trial conducted in Europe. A total of 1,653 patients were randomly assigned to undergo implantation of either the Firehawk or the XIENCE stent. The primary endpoint was target lesion failure, a composite of cardiac death, target vessel myocardial infarction, or ischemia-driven target lesion revascularization., Results: At 2-year follow-up, the incidence of target lesion failure was 8.7% in the Firehawk group versus 8.6% in the XIENCE group (p = 0.92). The event rates of individual components of the primary endpoint were comparable for the 2 groups. Landmark analyses between 1- and 2-year follow-up revealed no statistically significant difference of TLF for the Firehawk versus the XIENCE stent. Beyond 1 year, very late definite or probable stent thrombosis occurred in 3 patients (0.4%) in the Firehawk group and in 7 patients (0.9%) in the XIENCE group (p = 0.34)., Conclusions: The 2-year follow-up of the TARGET All Comers study confirms comparable safety and efficacy profiles of the Firehawk and XIENCE stents., (Copyright © 2019 American College of Cardiology Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Since many European countries use risk factor screening for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), we aimed to determine the performance of selective screening for GDM based on the 2013 WHO criteria., Design and Methods: Overall, 1811 women received universal screening with a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) with GDM in 12.5% (n = 231) women based on the 2013 WHO criteria. We retrospectively applied different European selective screening guidelines to this cohort and evaluated the performance of different clinical risk factors to screen for GDM., Results: By retrospectively applying the English, Irish, French and Dutch guidelines for selective screening, respectively 28.5% (n = 526), 49.7% (n = 916), 48.5% (n = 894) and 50.7% (n = 935) had at least one risk factor, with GDM prevalence of respectively 6.5% (n = 120), 7.9% (n = 146), 8.0% (n = 147) and 8.4% (n = 154). Using maternal age ≥30 and/or BMI ≥25 for screening, positive rate was 69.9% (n = 1288), GDM prevalence 10.2% (n = 188), sensitivity 81.4% (CI: 75.8–86.2%) and specificity 31.8% (CI: 29.5–34.1%). Adding other clinical risk factors did not improve detection. GDM women without risk factors had more neonatal hypoglycemia (14.4 vs 4.0%, P = 0.001) and labor inductions (39.7 vs 25.9%, P = 0.020) than normal-glucose tolerant women, and less cesarean sections than GDM women with risk factors (13.8 vs 31.0%, P = 0.010)., Conclusions: By applying selective screening by European guidelines, about 50% of women would need an OGTT with the lowest number of missed cases (33%) by the Dutch guidelines. Screening with age ≥30 years and/or BMI ≥25, reduced the number of missed cases to 18.6% but 70% would need an OGTT., (© 2019 European Society of Endocrinology)