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You can thank the resuscitation council for this. The authors of their guidelines included bone marrow as a suitable emergency sample for use when conventional venous access fails. I recall that there was some discussion on the mailbase at the time regarding putting it through blood gas machines. Makes some sense from their perspective as there is no alternative way of getting a sample for electrolytes etc. Like most ward based clinicians, they have no understanding of the potential impact of alternative samples on the future operation of analysers to which they might be submitted and certainly little or no clue about the potential legal issues around CE marking of assays or interpretation of results from different sample sources. I found this in my POCT files obviously from around the time the guidelines originally came out. The reference is on page 54 if you follow the link (apologies for the lack of attribution if this was your original text!) - "Our newly appointed Resuscitation Officer has come to me and asked if they can put bone marrow samples through the gas analysers for blood gases. When I expressed some mild surprise at this request(!), I was informed that this practice is recommended under the new Guidlines for Resuscitation laid down by the Resuscitation Council. A brief discussion with the blood gas manufacturers got a stunned reply, and the comment that this would invalidate any warranties. Bone marrow aspirates contain all sorts of nasty stuff that would certainly block the analyser nicely. The Resus officer than came back to me and said OK, not a good idea then, but can we have U/E on bone marrow? For those who would like to read this document, go to www.resus.org.uk/pages/als.pdf. It certainly suggests that when venous access is impossible, then intra-osseous samples can be used for gases and U/E. There is no mention of reference ranges, sample requirements etc. " Richard Stott Principal Clinical Scientist Doncaster & Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust ------ACB discussion List Information-------- This is an open discussion list for the academic and clinical community working in clinical biochemistry. Please note, archived messages are public and can be viewed via the internet. Views expressed are those of the individual and they are responsible for all message content. ACB Web Site http://www.acb.org.uk List Archives http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ACB-CLIN-CHEM-GEN.html List Instructions (How to leave etc.) http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/