Speaker:
Albert Tsui. Clinical Biochemist. Alberta Precision Laboratories.
Albert Tsui is a clinical biochemist with Alberta Precision Laboratories and Assistant Professor at University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. He currently provides oversight to pre-analytics and core chemistry in Edmonton hospital laboratories. His area of research interest focuses on pre-analytics, laboratory standardization, laboratory information system, and translational research in cardiovascular and critical care medicine.
Overview:
Contamination with intravenous (IV) fluids is a common cause of specimen rejection in hospital labs. The impact of missed contaminated samples can lead to false elevation or reduction of laboratory results, leading to misdiagnosis and mismanagement of patient care. Identification of contaminated samples can be challenging and usually rely on common sense and experience. Internal laboratory measures such as failed delta checks and instrument errors may not be sensitive and specific enough. This presentation will highlight the current gaps to identify contaminated samples and describe an approach to identify these samples.
Objectives:
At the end of this activity, participants will be able to:
- Outline various approaches in the literature to identify specimens with fluid contamination
- Describe the considerations to develop, verify, implement and optimize algorithm to identify fluid contamination