Haemolysis in prehospital blood samples

Abstract

The increasing use of Point Of Care Testing (POCT) in the prehospital setting demands a high and consistent quality of blood samples. We have investigated the degree of haemolysis in 779 prehospital blood samples and found a significant increase in haemolysis compared to intrahospital samples. The degree of haemolysis was within acceptable limits for current analyses. However, haemolysis should be taken into account when implementing future analyses in the prehospital field.

Keywords:

• Hemolysis
• emergency care
• prehospital
• pre-analytical phase
• point-of-care testing
• blood specimen collection

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.