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More on Platelet Clumping

From Heather DeVries, Indiana University Health, a follow-up to Dr. King’s April 26 pseudothrombocytopenia entry: Hi George, I recently read an article by Drs. Adcock Funk, Lippi, and Favaloro about quality standards in coagulation testing. The article cited a study indicating that sending PFA samples through a pneumatic tube system would not cause a preanalytical effect. This is VERY intriguing to me! I seem to remember, from a long time ago, that we saw a lot of flow obstruction error codes with tubed samples, which we thought was due to platelet clumping. Have you read or heard anything about this?

Citation for the article (from 2012): Adcock DM, Lippi GC, Favaloro EJ. Quality standards for sample processing, transportation and storage in hemostasis testing. Semin Thromb Hemost 2012;38:576–85. Citation for the study (from 2008), noted in the article: Wallin, O., Söderberg, J., Grankvist, K., et al. Preanalytical effects of pneumatic tube transport on routine haematology, coagulation parameters, platelet function and global coagulation. Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine 2008;46:1443–9.

Comments (1)
Specimen Management
emmanuelfav
May 14, 2018 3:48am

It depends on the pneumatic
It depends on the pneumatic tube system in place. The old tube systems were notorious for causing issues with platelet function. The newer systems seem to have less of an effect. We do not accept tubed PFA‘s; but our facility currently uses a pneumatic tube system from the 1980’s. A new one is being planned for installation. We will re-evaluate when the system is installed.

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