Diagnosing heart failure (HF) in patients presenting in primary care is difficult. Clinical assessment of symptoms and signs has limited sensitivity and specificity. NT-proBNP determination has been proven to be useful and accurate for ruling out the diagnosis of systolic HF, and some have even proposed different...

Many authors contend that drawing of umbilical ABGs is a simple method to evaluate the condition of the neonate and ideally would be routinely done for all newborns [13]. Other authors disagree. Appropriate general principles guide clinicians when drawing and interpreting ABGs for all patients. The special needs of...

BACKGROUND: Hospitals in countries with public health systems have recently adopted organizational changes to improve efficiency and resource allocation, and reducing inappropriate hospitalizations has been established as an important goal, as well as avoiding or buffering overcrowding in Emergency Departments. AIMS: ...

Chris Price and Andrew St John have followed their book Point-of-Care Testing for Managers and Policymakers with another look at the subject from strategic vision to change management and implementation in Point-of-Care Testing: Making Innovation Work for Patient-Centered Care. In their latest book the authors give...

Test results, essential for quality healthcare, constitute more than 70% of patients’ health records. Because quality results are so important, governments around the world mandate a series of laboratory practices to ensure quality.  All laboratories in the United States follow the Clinical Laboratory Improvement...

Preanalytical errors are quite frequent in the area of point-of-care testing (POCT). There are many reasons for that. First of all, POCT testing is usually performed by clinical staff (i.e. nurses and physicians), who are neither so skilled nor educated for laboratory work as laboratory professionals. Moreover,...

When collecting blood for blood gas analysis, it is important to remove air bubbles from syringes to avoid erroneous results, especially for pO₂, with a number of factors affecting the potential magnitude of the interference to pO₂ by air bubbles.  In this study, we calculate the expected theoretical changes in pO₂...

Despite the pervasive measurement of cardiac troponin (cTn) for the diagnosis of myocardial infarction (AMI) and acute coronary syndromes (ACS), the continuous evolution of assays and guidelines for their application has created uncertainty among laboratorians and clinicians: criteria for the choice of assay and...

Reprinted and translated by permission of Läkartidningen from “Serumlaktat - användbar analys inom akutsjukvården”, by Bengt R Widgren and Monique Ekhardt, 2011; vol 108: 475-477. Copyright 2011 by Author, Läkartidningen and AB Typoform, Sweden.Translated by Radiometer Medical ApS. In emergency care triage, diagnosis...

Arterial blood gases (ABG), a clinical test that involves measurement of the pH of arterial blood and the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide dissolved in arterial blood, is routinely used in the diagnosis and monitoring of predominantly critically/acutely ill patients being cared for in hospital emergency rooms and...