Biochemical and hematological analyses are done in laboratories, clinics, general practices and in point-of-care settings such as ITU.  Generally, numerical test results are generated.   Test results vary in individuals over time due to preanalytical variation, analytical imprecision and biological variation. The...

Disturbance of the mechanisms which maintain normal blood pH is a defining feature of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), an acute and life-threatening complication of the chronic metabolic disease, diabetes.  For this reason diagnosis and monitoring of DKA invariably include measurement of arterial blood gases. This...

Blood gas analysis at the point of care plays an important role during and after an open-heart surgery. acutecaretesting.org recently talked to Prof. Knut Kleesiek, MD, Director of the Institute for Laboratory and Transfusion Medicine of the Heart and Diabetes Center North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, to find out more ...

Optimizing all the steps in the testing cycle is as crucial to the success of point-of-care testing (POCT) as the measurement process itself. The complete POCT process or testing cycle is a complex series of events that involve many parties in any organization.  Consultation with all the people concerned is vital and ...

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is one of the most rapidly growing areas within laboratory medicine. The need for POCT has developed because in many cases the central laboratory has been unable to meet the expectations of clinical users, particularly with respect to turnaround time. It is widely recognized that...

Apgar scores and umbilical artery pH have traditionally been used as objective measures of neonatal asphyxia. According to the literature, the practice of cord gas analysis varies greatly both between and within countries - whether analysis is performed, whether it is routine at all births and why it is performed...

Fluid and electrolyte management is an important and challenging part of the management of any very premature or critically ill newborn. The newborn's ability to maintain fluid and electrolyte homeostasis in the face of the vagaries of extrauterine life is compromised by immature renal function. The very premature...

Measurement of glucose and lactate after 30 minutes of storage at room temperature can give deviating results of up to 5 % [1,2] and 29 % of the reference value [3] respectively [1,4], due to in vitro glycolysis Glucose and lactate are both important parameters in the surveillance of patients in critical care...

Like many hospitals throughout the world, the Princess Royal Hospital in Sussex, England has set up a quality assurance (QA) scheme to verify the competency of glucose-meter operators. Their scoring system, however is anything but typical. Instead of relying solely on individual results, the system also uses...

Preanalytical errors are said to be the reason for up to 75 % [1] of all errors in laboratory medicine. The diagnostic consequences depend on the magnitude of the preanalytical error.  In worst case, these errors may lead to mistreatment of patients; in all cases, these errors are an extra workload for the hospital...