Service Information
Our Histopathology service provides a comprehensive diagnostic service using a range of state-of-the art technologies and manual laboratory procedures for the diagnosis and monitoring of patients.
Histopathology has laboratories at both Ipswich and Colchester Hospitals. The services operate core hours Monday to Friday. The Ipswich site also operates a limited Saturday morning service.
Operating Hours
Weekdays Saturday Sunday
Ipswich 08:00 – 18:00 08:15 – 12.00 No service
Colchester 09:00 – 17:30 No service No service
Services and tests offered by the Histopathology Laboratory
The Histopathology Department offers the following services:
- Histopathology – routine Histopathology services including, Haematoxylin and Eosin (H+E), Immunohistochemistry (IHC), immunofluorescence on skin biopsies (IMF) (This test is outsourced)
- Pre-booked Frozen Sections.
- Diagnostic Cytology – diagnostic reporting service for most types of non- gynaecological cytology samples, including, serous fluids, respiratory samples, cyst fluids, joint fluids, urines and fine needle aspirations. Currently the majority of diagnostic cytology samples are processed at Ipswich however joint fluids are processed at each site. Reporting of diagnostic cytology cases is undertaken at each site.
Please refer the service or the specific Pathology handbooks for Ipswich and Colchester for more specific information for test requirements on each site.
Advice and Interpretation
Medical and technical members of staff are available on the telephone, and at MDT, for advice interpretation of results, transport of specimens, the correct containers and fixatives to use, and the requirement for sample labelling and request form completion.
Histopathology at Ipswich is an ISO15189: 2022 accredited Medical Laboratory Accreditation number 9316.
Histopathology at Colchester is an ISO15189: 2022 accredited Medical Laboratory Accreditation number 27661.
The Histopathology department is currently implementing Digital Histopathology reporting across both of our sites, which is not currently included within our scope of accreditation to ISO15189:2022. This does not affect validity of results and the department will be undertaking an extension to scope process for inclusion to the scope of accredited activities.
Please see the scope of accreditation documents found at the above links for full details of accredited tests and activities provided by ESNEFT Histopathology.
Handbooks
Histology Handbook – Ipswich Hospital CELL-IPS-INFO-75 v15.0
