If heparine geltubes are being used, platelets often remain on top of the gel at suboptimal centrifuge conditions. Subsequent mixing wil resuspend the platelets and if present in large numbers, they might release potassium in relevant quantities.

 

I hope this may contribute.

 

Best regards,

 

Bart Ballieux

 

B.E.P.B. Ballieux PhD, laboratory Specialist in Clinical Biochemistry 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

 

 

 

HI Nicola,

We have all our GP surgeries using centrifuges with BD SST tubes, and do not have these issues....if a sample requires to be re-spun, we do this - but it is a rare occurrence. Our samples that are arriving right now have been transported for four and five hours, so I wouldn’t put it down to transportation either.

Have the centrifuges been checked? We had one practice that had mistaken rpm for G. We had a number of issues at the outset with nurses stopping the centrifuge prematurely because the van driver had arrived/ putting the samples in the fridge overnight and spinning them in the morning etc, but not overtly cloudy samples.

Hope this helps,

Elaine

 

 

 

 

Dear All,

 

We have a number of remote surgeries with centrifuges which we have recently been encouraging the use of in an attempt to reduce erroneous potassium results. However, we are now noticing a large proportion of samples spun at surgeries appearing to be cloudy/inadequately centrifuged with high potassium results.

 

Is this something other labs that receive centrifuged samples have come across? How do you deal with the samples?

 

Apart from inadequate centrifugation at source we are also assessing whether this is caused by the agitation of transporting samples once they have been spun. Has anyone investigated this? Do any labs issue mechanical separator tubes (more expensive) for samples that will be spun at source? We currently use BD gel SST tubes.

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Nicola

Nicola Pullan PhD FRCPath
Consultant Clinical Biochemist
Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
Combe Park, Bath, BA1 3NG

Dir Line: 01225 824711
Visit our website at: www.ruh.nhs.uk/pathology

 

 

 

 

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