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Clinical Biochemistry in Primary Care

Checked: 15-07-2024 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 14-07-2026

Clinical Guidelines

There are useful Clinical Guidelines for GPs on management of common biochemistry problems on the NBT website including:

Hypercalcaemia

Hyperkalaemia

Hyperlipidaemia

Hypoglycaemia

Hyponatraemia

Proteinuria

Clinical Biochemistry UHBW

The Clinical Biochemistry department at UHBW provides a comprehensive service to UHBW and surrounding GPs.

The service can be used to:

Discuss biochemical results with a consultant
Agree next steps, e.g. add-on tests to existing samples
Discuss potential referrals to the Pathology Day Unit, e.g. for blood transfusion, iron transfusion, water deprivation test, endocrine dynamic function tests, etc.

During working hours (Mon - Fri, 9am - 5pm) advice on the appropriateness and interpretation of tests and adding on tests can be obtained from the Duty Biochemist:

Telephone: 0117 342 7834 (adults) or 0117 342 1299 (paeds)
Email: biochemadvice@UHBW.nhs.uk (for non-urgent queries - we aim to respond within 24 hours)

Out of hours the department can be contacted via the BRI switchboard 0117 923 0000. For the laboratory ask for bleep 2331. For urgent clinical advice ask for the on-call Biochemist.

Pathology Day Unit (Ambulatory care)

Please see the specific Pathology Remedy page.

Clinical Biochemistry NBT

The Clinical Biochemistry Department at NBT provides a comprehensive, clinically led laboratory service for North Bristol NHS Trust and the surrounding community.

Information about specimen requirements for biochemistry tests, endocrinology investigation protocols and interpretation advice is available here.

The duty biochemist can be contacted as below:

Telephone : 0117 4148437

Email: nbn-tr.ClinicalBiochemistryNBT@nhs.net

Biotin interference in clinical biochemistry immunoassays

Biotin at doses of >5 mg per day (higher than average in the body) may interfere in the Beckman immunoassays for CA199, free T3 and free T4 in use at UHBW, NBT and RUH, causing false high or low results. Such doses are only present in over-the-counter high dose biotin supplements or high dose treatment regimens. Multivitamin tablets contain much lower amounts of biotin and pose no risk of interference.
For more details please see here, or contact the BRI duty biochemist on 0117 342 7834.

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.