New flebotomist? By mistake a blue citrate tube was taken and than, after noticing mistake, blood is (secretely) transferred to gel-tube?

 

We did find these type of mistakes sometimes with EDTA blood being transferred to Serum Separator Tubes .

 

Best regards,

 

Bart Ballieux

 

 B.E.P.B. Ballieux (PhD, EuSpLM)

Specialist in Laboratory Medicine  and Endocrinology, Department KCL, E2-P.  Leiden University Medical Centre, P.O.box 9600, 2300RC  Leiden
Tel: +3171-5262165/62278 Fax: +3171-5266753  email: [log in to unmask]
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

 

 

 

We had a small number of similar cases recently which, after extensive investigation and ruling out anything else, we attributed to accidental citrate contamination.

 

Hope this helps

 

Kind regards

Louise Tilbrook

 

 

 

 

Dear All,

 

We have recently had several samples, from different patients, come in with very high sodium concentrations on Abbott Architect. These are isolated abnormal results, previously sodium was normal in each case. Direct ISE (from blood gas analyser (Radiometer)) confirmed the high result, although was slightly lower in each case. Osmolalities were normal - discrediting the sodium result. To check the effect of tube type on the result sodium was run on a whole blood K-EDTA sample from the same patient taken at the same time. It was run on the blood gas analyser and was low/normal. 

These were not post-contrast samples, the most recent being a routine OPD sample taken at a GP surgery, and no drugs are being taken that might account for this phenomenon. The only consistent finding is that they were low volume samples. We are leaning towards this being a contaminant from the tube and is detected in these patients, in part, because of the low volume. We use BD gel separator tubes routinely and wondered if anyone else had experienced this? This is not a common enough problem that low volume can explain it entirely as we get far more low volume samples than unexplained high sodium results but we are scraping the barrel of what can be going on. We are also sending the sample for analysis by ICP-MS to check the sodium by a third method. Any ideas gratefully received! Thanks for your help,

 

Allison

 

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