[Roles of department of laboratory medicine on the new patient clinic].

It is now quite well accepted that laboratory test results are indispensable or of primary significance to accurately diagnose a new patient's disease. Furthermore, most doctors recently find difficulty in appropriately selecting and ordering necessary but not excess laboratory tests and to read and interpret all the given test results correctly. In our hospital the system of the outpatient clinic will be changed basically on a specialty clinic system. In order to operate such a specialty clinic system effectively, it appears quite important to set up a unit to discriminate new unspecified patients properly and to consult them to an appropriate specialty clinic. As a preliminary trial, we opened a new patient clinic in July, 1992. The aim of this clinic is to accurately diagnose the new patients' disease immediately and to send them to the specialty clinic on the day of their first visit. Prior to history taking and physical examination by the attending doctor, the patients are instructed to take a set of laboratory tests. These include urinalysis, chest X-P, ECG, hematological examinations (RBC, WBC, Ht, Hb, PLT and ESR) and biochemical tests (AST, ALT, ALP, gamma GTP, LDH, CPK, Chol, T-Bil, TP, Alb, TG, BUN, Cr, Glu, Na, K, Ca, P and CRP). These results are transferred to the clinic within one hour so that the doctor is able to make the diagnosis effectively and to refer the patients to an appropriate clinic.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)