Influence of Blood Collection Systems on Coagulation Tests

Abstract

Objective: Coagulation tests are influenced by pre-analytic conditions such as blood collection systems. Change of glass collection tubes with plastic ones will cause alteration of the test results. The aim of this study was to compare three plastic blood collection tubes with a standard glass blood collection tube and each plastic collection tube with the other two for possible additional tube-to- tube differences. Material and Methods: A total of 284 blood samples were obtained from 42 patients receiving warfarin during their routine controls, besides 29 healthy volunteers. Subgroup analyses were done according to health status. Results: Our study demonstrated that different blood collection tubes have a statistically significant influence on coagulation tests. The magnitude of the effect depends on the tube used. However most of the tests performed on samples obtained from any tube correlated significantly with results obtained from other tube samples. Conclusion: Although blood collection tubes with different brands or properties will have distinct effects on coagulation tests, the influence of these blood collection tubes may be relatively small to interfere with decision-making on dose prescription, therefore lack clinical importance. Correlations between the results showed that, one of these plastic blood collection tubes tested in our study, can be used interchangably for a wide variety of coagulation assays.Conflict of interest:None declared.

D-dimer: Preanalytical, analytical, postanalytical variables, and clinical applications

“…Gosselin et al also failed to find significant differences for D-dimer values (Advanced D-Dimer) when using plastic (Vacutainer V R , BD and Vacuette V R , Greiner Bio-one (polypropylene)) and glass citrated collection tubes (3.2%) [36]. More recently, Yavas et al compared three plastic citrate (3.2%) tubes (Vacutainer V R , BD; Vacutainer V R Plus Plastic, BD; and Vacuette V R , Greiner Bio-one) with a standard glass tube (Vacutainer V R , BD), and also failed to find significant differences [37]. Therefore, the quality of D-dimer measurement seems to be not substantially dependent on the type of collection tube.…”

Pre-Analytical Within-Laboratory Evacuated Blood-Collection Tube Quality Evaluation

“…Nevertheless, the plastic tubes of different brands evaluated on patients and healthy volunteers were confirmed to be statistically but not clinically significantly different [17]. For patients on oral anticoagulant therapy with vitamin K antagonists, ANOVA test confirmed statistically significant differences in prothrombin time for the tubes of four different types [18].…”

Methodological variations affect the release of VEGF in vitro and fibrinolysis’ time from platelet concentrates

“…The glass tubes serve to accelerate the clot retraction; however, they are susceptible to breakage during handling and centrifugation, increasing the risk of accidents at work. In this way, the use of plastic tubes with clot activators, in laboratory logistics, accelerate the formation of the clot and reduce the risks of these accidents [4].…”

“…The fibrin matrix is a natural clot that acts as a primordial scaffold for the conduction of tissue repair [1,2]; it is a polymeric three-dimensional network formed after fibrinogen activation by enzymatic peptide cleavage [3]. The polymerization occurs instantly by contact with tissue glycoproteins or by thixotropic oxidation in exogenous mechanisms [4].…”