BACKGROUND It has been demonstrated that dynamic electrochemistry can be used to correct blood glucose measurement results for potentially interfering conditions, such as humidity, hematocrit (HCT) variations, and ascorbic acid. The purpose of this laboratory investigation was to assess the potential influence of hematocrit variations on a variety of blood glucose meters applying different meas...

INTRODUCTION Current guidelines and consensus recommend arterial and venous samples as equally acceptable for blood glucose assessment in point-of-care devices, but there is limited evidence to support this recommendation. We evaluated the accuracy of two devices for bedside point-of-care blood glucose measurements using arterial, fingerstick and catheter venous blood samples in ICU patients, a...

G lucometers are used to quickly obtain glucose concentrations in the hospital and at home. For quality assurance, the American Diabetes Association recommends periodically comparing the results from glucometers with those from referenced laboratories (1). Usually, measurement using glucometers is done one-by-one by technicians, which is costly regarding manpower. In contrast, measurement using...

AND EXPLANATION Blood culture is one of the most important and critical procedures performed in the microbiology laboratory. Since blood is normally sterile, the isolation and identification of an organism has great diagnostic significance. Blood cultures are of great importance in diagnosing such conditions as endocarditis, typhoid fever, pneumonia and other diseases characterized by bacteremi...

To the Editor: Hand-held glucose meters are a practical solution for measuring glucose in neonatal intensive care units and special care nurseries because of their portability, the immediacy of results, and minimal blood volume requirements compared with dispatching samples for central laboratory analysis. We have used the Roche Accu-chek Advantage II meter for some time in our neonatal intensi...

INTRODUCTION Glucose test strips vary slightly from batch to batch. These variations are accounted for by a batch-specific "code": a set of parameters defining the relationship between the signal change induced on the glucose test strip and the blood glucose concentration. METHODS We assessed the impact on accuracy of miscoding the ACCU-CHEK Aviva system across a wide range of glucose test st...

A controlled clinical comparison was made of the Isolator (Wampole Laboratories, Cranbury, N.J.) and the Septi-Chek Release bottle (Roche Diagnostics, Nutley, N.J.). From 6,345 blood culture sets fulfilling minimum criteria for volume of blood cultured, 840 strains were isolated, of which only 691 (82%) were considered to be representative of bloodstream infection according to Centers for Disea...

We have compared the ability of the Mycobacterium Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT) system, a new culture method with an oxygen-sensitive fluorescent sensor, to recover mycobacteria from sputum samples with the abilities of egg-based medium and the Septi-Chek AFB system. We have also assessed the clinical utility of the AccuProbe or the AMPLICOR-PCR assay to directly identify Mycobacterium tuberculo...