Variations in radiotherapy delivery in England - evidence from the national radiotherapy dataset.

Aims, Materials And Method: Data in the national radiotherapy dataset for England for 2009-2011 is based upon downloads of activity from every linear accelerator in the country through its oncology management system linked to the local patient administration system to give a full overview of each patient episode.

Results: An analysis of this dataset shows that there is still a considerable variation in radiotherapy activity across the country, with a two-fold variation between the most and least active networks. Lower activity is seen in London and the southeast compared with the rest of the country, but when the data are split between the north and south of the country, no such variation is seen.

Development of a clinically relevant liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry assay for 13 drugs of abuse in urine, designed to meet the needs of the service users.

Background: The clinical requirements of the users of assay results must be at the centre of assay development. We aimed to develop a single liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) assay for drugs of abuse in urine that would meet the needs of our service users and replace the multiple screening and confirmatory techniques previously in use.

Methods: After discussion with our users, it was decided that 13 drugs and metabolites should be measured in our panel: morphine, codeine, norcodeine, dihydrocodeine, 6-monoacetylmorphine, acetyl codeine, methadone and its metabolite, buprenorphine and its metabolite, amphetamine, benzoylecgonine and cotinine.

Naturally occurring isotopes of an analyte can interfere with doubly deuterated internal standard measurement.

Background: Internal standards are essential in quantitative mass spectrometry (MS) assays to correct for variability in sample extraction and ionization at the source. In liquid chromatography MS assays, analogues of the analyte with several atoms replaced by their stable isotopes, e.g.

A simplified method for the measurement of urinary free cortisol using LC-MS/MS.

The measurement of 24 h urinary free cortisol is used in the investigation of patients with symptoms of hypercortisolism. Many different methods have been published for the measurement of cortisol, but most of these methods involve cumbersome pre-extraction of the cortisol prior to analysis. We have developed a method using in-well protein precipitation which serves to clean up the sample without requiring lengthy sample preparation.