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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This article explores the potential benefits of point-of-care testing in the ED. Price and St. John provide a detailed description on how to approach four common aspects of point-of-care testing (POCT) in the ED, specifically, the challenges of adopting POCT, the impact of POCT on clinical decisions, the impact of...

Summary The reference interval for a biochemical analyte is usually an interval of values bounded by the reference limit values at certain designated percentiles [1].  As always when choosing a cut-off, the value will determine the trade-off between clinical sensitivity and specificity. When a low cut-off is chosen,...

Reprinted with permission from Biochemia Medica. The journal of Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Biochemia Medica 2016;26(3):318-36  Blood gas analysis (BGA) is exposed to risks of errors caused by improper sampling, transport and storage conditions. The Clinical and Laboratory...