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Article
Article
June 2021
Point-of-care testing in the Emergency Department - Getting to the point
Introduction
Emergency department (ED) medicine is a specialty that faces unique medical and organizational challenges. Emergency department staff must treat a wide variety of acute injuries and illnesses in a rapid and expedient manner to ensure optimal patient care. This makes logistical organization arguably more...
Point-of-care testing
Process optimization
Article
March 2021
Improving clinical care and reducing health-care cost: the strength of using PCT to guide diagnosis and treatment
Content
Introduction
Diagnosing and treating sepsis
Can PCT testing improve health care?
Can PCT testing reduce health-care cost?
Can PCT testing improve health care at reduced cost?
Introduction
Procalcitonin (PCT) is a 116 amino acid prohormone of calcitonin and katacalcin, both involved with...
Infection/sepsis
PCT
Article
February 2020
All you need to know about troponin measurements
Introduction
This article features a general background of the analytical characteristics associated with cardiac troponin testing.
It addresses the following areas:
Introduction to troponin
What is the 99th percentile upper reference limit (URL) and why do we use it?
Determination of the 99th percentile...
Troponins
Article
December 2019
Preparing for high sensitivity troponin testing
Introduction
Since the first publications on cardiac troponin (cTn) in the 1970s, around 20.000 scientific reports on this powerful biomarker of myocardial injury have been published. Over time, cTn assays improved their analytical performance and became the designated biomarker for ruling out or ruling in acute...
Troponins
Article
September 2018
Pseudohyperkalemia
In health plasma/serum potassium (K+) is maintained within the approximate reference range of 3.5 to 5.2 mmol/L, with serum values being slightly higher (∼ 0.4 mmol/L) than those of plasma because the process of blood clotting, essential to recovery of serum samples, is associated with release of potassium from...
Preanalytical phase
Electrolytes
Article
July 2018
Patient Blood Management – the importance of hemoglobin measurement and minimizing phlebotomy-associated iatrogenic blood loss
Transfusion of donated (allogenic) red blood cells is of undoubted life-saving benefit to those suffering rapid and massive blood loss (hemorrhage) due to major trauma, or complications during surgery and childbirth. However, the procedure is not without risk, and accumulated evidence over the past 2 decades has...
Point-of-care testing
Blood gases/acid-base
Preanalytical phase
Article
June 2018
Clarifying the confusion of GFRs, creatinine, and cystatin C
Because measurements of GFR are tedious, estimated GFRs based on creatinine or cystatin C are widely used for assessing kidney function. Both measured GFRs and the Staging System for CKD based on GFR have analytical and clinical shortcomings. The advantages of serum creatinine and cystatin C, and eGFR will be...
Creatinine/urea
Kidneys/fluids
Article
May 2018
Simplified reliable diagnostic management of acute pulmonary embolism
The diagnosis of pulmonary embolism is challenging due to the non-specificity of signs and symptoms and the very busy Emergency Departments to which the overall majority of patients with suspected PE present. While several well-validated diagnostic algorithms exist and are readily available, it is known that in many...
D-dimer
Article
April 2018
Observation of clinically significant errors in oxygen saturation calculations when pO2 is low
Calculation-based approaches to determining oxygen saturation, as used in some point-of-care tests, increasingly deviate from values measured directly by CO-oximetry as the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood decreases. Oxygen saturation should be measured by CO-oximetry when inaccuracies in calculations may...
Point-of-care testing
Blood gases/acid-base