Iatrogenic phlebotomy loss resulting from the intensive clinical monitoring in the weeks immediately following birth remains the primary cause of neonatal anemia and the need for red-blood-cell (RBC) transfusion. Reducing RBC transfusion needs in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) requires new approaches for...

Methods for the measurement of hemoglobin (Hb) were first developed well over a century ago, so that hemoglobin was among the first diagnostic blood tests available to clinicians during the first decades of the 20th century when laboratory medicine was in its infancy.  Today it is the most frequently requested blood...

Capillary blood sampling via a heel lance is the most common procedure performed in hospitalized neonates. Adequate training and supervision of the personnel performing the procedure is necessary to prevent/minimize inadequate sampling volumes, false laboratory results and complications such as pain. Efforts should be ...

We are all wary to a greater or lesser extent of the doctor advancing with needle and syringe. Arterial puncture required for blood gas analysis is a particularly painful procedure, certainly more painful than venipuncture.  Many studies have demonstrated that administration of local anesthesia is effective in...

Blood gases are measured from an arterial blood sample to evaluate the respiratory adequacy and oxygen status of the critically ill patient. For the adult patient, the arterial blood is sampled either by arterial puncture or from an indwelling catheter. In neonates and children, the wish to minimize iatrogenic blood...

Five years of data on percutaneous injuries (PIs) from the EPINet multi-hospital sharps injury database at the University of Virginia were analyzed to understand exposure risks faced by personnel in intensive care/critical care settings. Of 687 PIs in intensive care units (ICUs), nurses had the highest proportion of...

Venous blood is an acceptable alternative to arterial blood for estimation of bicarbonate by blood gas analysis, according to the results of a recently published Australian study. Over a six-month study period, clinicians at the Emergency Department of Western Hospital in Melbourne simultaneously sampled venous and...

Simple data-mining algorithms can be applied to point-of-care testing (POCT) data to document compliance of quality control, operator training and to identify potential preanalytical errors. Data can be manipulated to automate manual review and other laborious processes for identifying data trends, verifying...

The significance of good practice during the pretesting phase of clinical laboratory investigation cannot be overemphasized. The production of high-quality, accurate results, which are clinically useful, depends as much on practice before the patient’s sample reaches the laboratory as it does on the analytical phase...

Today’s blood gas sensors are the result of many years of gradual improvements and optimizations. The operating principles behind sensor technology have largely remained unchanged, even though the size of analyzers and thus of sensors has decreased remarkably.  However, miniaturization has created a new challenge: to ...