Roy
We saw this at St James's Hospital in Leeds following an upgrade / maintenance to the pneumatic tube system. The cause was eventually diagnosed as being due to a non-functioning deceleration zone, so the pods were crashing into the buffers and this was haemolysing samples. My colleague Helen Shepherd had this as a poster at (I think) last year's Focus, but she's on leave so I can't give you the reference.
Following repair of the deceleration zone, haemolysis rates returned to previous values.
Best wishes,
Steve
Stephen R Goodall BSc MSc FRCPath
Consultant Clinical Biochemist
Clinical Biochemistry &
Immunology
Leeds Teaching Hospitals
LS1 3EX UK
Tel: 0113 392 3691
>>> Roy Fisher <[log in to unmask]> 07/08/2009 11:58 >>>
Dear Colleagues,
Since last weekend we have seen a large increase in the number of significantly haemolysed samples ( up to 30-40% ). Some patients are having to be bled three times before having a troponin T can be measured! Most come from A & E and MAU. We have eliminated most of the usual suspects, such as poor venepuncture technique, inappropriate use of vacutainer blood tubes, batches of tubes and handling/centrifugation in the lab. We have also run parallel clotted and heparin blood samples. We are now investigating the Air Tube system which was upgraded two weeks ago as it has been noticed that some lithium heparin bloods had bubbles at the top of the sample..
Has any other laboratory experienced such a problem? Is there any evidence that Air Tube systems can be implicated? Any other ideas welcome as we would prefer to have a relatively hassle free weekend.
Many thanks
Roy
Roy Fisher
Consultant Biochemist
Royal Cornwall Hospital
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