NHS Pathology for the Black Country in the West Midlands

BCPS offers comprehensive NHS services to the Black Country from our sites in Birmingham, West Bromwich, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. We also offer specialist services to other laboratories around the United Kingdom and the World.

Vitamin D Analysis

We use LC-MS/MS technology to produce high quality results for vitamin D analysis. While closely aligned to serum results also produced by LC-MS/MS, our results will not always compare with local laboratory methods, some of which are meant to give a ‘screening’ result. For example, methods using immunoassay techniques may give different results. We use quality systems to ensure our blood spot results align closely with our venous blood vitamin D service, for which we are one of the largest providers in the UK.

Your Results

We send your results to the email address that is provided on the consent form. Your results are clearly shown along with reference intervals and your status. We also use a simple ‘traffic light’ system so that you can visually compare your results to the NHS guideline ranges.

Understanding your results

• We encourage you to take your results to your local pharmacist or nutritionist for further advice on supplementation if indicated. • Lab tests online is an excellent website to understand more about vitamin D levels - see here….. • NHS Choices also offer advice on Vitamin D - see here….

Vitamin D Research in our laboratory

Vitamin D levels in our Birmingham population in 2006 Our NHS laboratory has had a specialist Vitamin laboratory since the 1990s, when it came to be part of Pathology at the world famous Dudley Road Hospital, as part of the move of Birmingham Eye Hospital from the city centre. We have been involved with many research projects looking at Vitamin D over the years both in the UK and around the world. An important publication from 2006, particularly topical at present, is our study showing pronounced differences in Vitamin D deficiency in different parts of our diverse population. Download the full paper here….. Self-administration of vitamin D supplements in the general public We investigated unexpectedly high results for vitamin D discovered in some of the general public who used our service over the period 2013-2015. This paper also presents data comparing the blood spot method with the conventional serum vitamin D analysis, showing a very close relationship. A key part of our Quality Control is to ensure this relationship is maintained. The paper’s conclusions includes a warning that clinicians should be aware patients may be self-administering very high concentrations of vitamin D, especially when investigating unexplained hypercalcaemia. Full paper to download here….

Our Address: Clinical Biochemistry Department, Black Country Pathology Services, City Hospital Birmingham, B18 7QH, UK This service to the public is provided from the SWBH NHS Trust laboratories part of BCPS. Our work is overseen by the governance policies, procedures and quality system applying to BCPS. Please contact us if you would like further details in this area. Note: Birmingham Picture Library receives orders and forwards them to the laboratory and is the organisation appearing on your bank statement. Queries are handled by the laboratory once orders are received.