Laboratory Medicine | Core Laboratory

Chemistry Section

• Carl H. Smith, M.D., Co-director  h | r | c

The Chemistry Section of the Core Laboratory at St. Louis Children's Hospital offers specialized tests for diagnosis and therapy assessment of pediatric disease, while minimizing specimen volume requirements. In addition to therapeutic drug monitoring, blood gas, and traditional chemistry measurements, the laboratory offers analysis of sweat chloride and sodium (cystic fibrosis diagnosis), Lactate/pyruvate (primary lactic acidosis metabolic disorder diagnosis), phenylalanine, urine ammonia/urine pCO2 (renal tubular acidosis diagnosis), and ibuprofen (a drug taken by patients with cystic fibrosis to reduce pulmonary inflammation). The laboratory has been actively involved in research and development of new technologies of special interest in pediatric medicine. These include development and evaluation of a new method to detect fetal hemoglobin in the stool of newborns, anticoagulants for collection of ionized calcium specimens, and characterization of the effects of plasma protein levels on direct conductivity methods for measuring hematocrit.