Clinical Chemistry
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Clinical Chemistry 49: 1187-1189, 2003; 10.1373/49.7.1187
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(Clinical Chemistry. 2003;49:1187-1189.)
© 2003 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.

Technical Briefs

Iodinated Contrast Media Interfere with Gel Barrier Formation in Plasma and Serum Separator Tubes

Tom Spiritus1, Zahur Zaman1,a and Walter Desmet2

1 Department of Laboratory Medicine-Clinical Chemistry and
2 Department of Cardiology, University Hospitals Leuven, Herestraat 49, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium

aauthor for correspondence: fax 32-16-34-79-31, e-mail Zahur.Zaman@uz.kuleuven.ac.be

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Vacutainer® serum separator tubes (SST® II) and plasma separator tubes (PST® II) manufactured by Becton Dickinson are widely used for blood collection. These tubes contain an inert, thixotropic polymer gel with a specific gravity of ~1.04 (1). Aspiration of blood into the tube and subsequent centrifugation displace the gel, and it forms a disk between the cells and the supernatant.

We recently encountered blockages of sample needles on our clinical chemistry Modular automated analyzer (Roche Diagnostics) with samples collected in PST II tubes. The tubes were placed directly on the analyzer after centrifugation for primary-tube sampling. The problematic samples had been collected from patients shortly after radiologic examinations requiring administration of iodinated radio-opaque contrast medium (Visipaque® or Omnipaque®). Instead of forming a separation layer between the sediment and the plasma after centrifugation, the gels had floated to the top and thus hindered analytical processing.

We investigated the influence of iodinated contrast media on gel barrier formation in PST II and SST II tubes. The most commonly used contrast media in our hospital are two nonionic contrast media, Omnipaque (iohexol; 350 g/L iodine; Nycomed) and Visipaque (iodixanol; 320 g/L iodine; Nycomed), and to a much lesser extent, two ionic contrast media, Telebrix® (sodium meglumine ioxithalamate; 350 g/L iodine; Guerbet) and . . . [Full Text of this Article]




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