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24/01/2020 1:21 pm
After bkr717 and epno's recent posts, I think it is safe to say that finger prick blood draws are NOT the way to go. It seems that we could be dealing with a dangerous margin of error here.
Anyone relying solely on their centrifuge for HCT results using only the finger prick method should change to veinous blood draws IMMEDIATELY!!!!
24/01/2020 1:44 pm
Guys, the reference method for taking blood for doing Hct is froma vein using a 23G blue tip needle.
search the forum this has been discussed before. Using a standard method allows reliable comparison.
some issues to consider:
Red blood cell hemolysis when using a slin pin to draw blood, results in low value
finger prick stab and squeeze blood out, you end up having more plasma in the drop than normal, again false low
As mentioned above, find a vein stab it with a 23G draw of 1ml blood fill 6 cap tubes spin, measure all take the mean value, if any are unusally low then discard. Do this 1 or 2 times per week while on loading and 1 when on maintenance
GP
24/01/2020 2:13 pm
As a point of comparison - I just ran 2 samples drawn with ankle blood:
using 29g slin pin, ave was 52.6
using 22g, ave was 54.2
Pretty big difference, at least worth nothing. Of course the 22g leaves a bigger hole/mark. Any thoughts on how to minimize this?
24/01/2020 2:30 pm
I've used a pin prick measure from the finger for 2 moths. I always use two samples and take the average. I flex my finger for about 15 seconds and then prick with a larger gauge lance. I also move the lance around to produce a larger hole so blood draw is easy without having to sqeeze my finger much. My numbers are normaly about 1 point more using this method then what I see from the lab on the same day. I always test about the same time of the morning using the same conditions.