The Principles of Clinical Cytogenetics - Extra Materials - Springer

Basic Laboratory Procedures 61
Editors’ Foreword to Section II
Despite a prolific increase in machinery available to the clinical laboratorian, involving both the
actual number of devices themselves as well as an ever-increasing variety of tasks they can perform,
cytogenetics is still a relatively labor-intensive discipline. The basic tool of the cytogenetics technologist
remains the microscope, and the number of steps involved in generating chromosomes for
analysis has essentially not changed for decades.
Although it is sometimes difficult to make a distinction between “how it’s done” and “how to do
it,” the former is our goal in presenting the following four chapters. It is not our intention to prepare
the reader for a career in the cytogenetics laboratory or to provide the cytogeneticist with yet another
lab manual. Our aim, rather, is to impress upon the reader the amount of effort and attention to detail
required in order to accurately diagnose a myriad of cytogenetic conditions from the variety of tissue
types routinely submitted to the laboratory.
However, given the diverse background of the individuals likely to be referring to this book, a
certain amount of technical data has been retained for those who might find it interesting and/or
informative.
It is our hope that this section will leave the reader with a newfound respect for the effort required
to perform this often critical aspect of patient care.
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