Prevalence of hemolytic specimens referred for arterial blood gas analysis.

摘要

Laboratory diagnostics is essential to clinical decision-making, assisting in the diagnosis, therapeutic drug monitoring and follow-up of the vast majority of human disorders. Nevertheless, laboratory testing is often delivered in a pressurized and complex environment, so that it appears to be no safer than other areas of diagnostics and healthcare. Although major efforts have been introduced for increasing both quality and safety throughout the total testing process over the past decades (1), there is evidence that laboratory errors still occur, especially in those processes that fall outside the direct jurisdiction of the laboratory personnel, and that conventionally belong to the "preanalytical phase" (2-4). Several studies have documented the burden and the type of preanalytical errors in different realities worldwide, but most of them have focused on errors related to clinical chemistry, immunochemistry, coagulation and hematological testing (5). Unfortunately, no reliable information has been provided to date on preanalytical errors related to arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis. In particular, considering that in vitro hemolysis is the leading source of unsuitable specimens in clinical laboratories (5), no data are available on the prevalence of hemolyzed specimens referred for ABG testing.