Evaluation of improved rapid-clotting blood collection tube

Abstract

The rapid-clotting blood collection tube, with its inside wall completely coated with thrombin, was originally developed to reduce the turn-around time (TAT) of clinical laboratory testing. However, this tube showed fibrin formation after centrifugation and abnormal laboratory data in rare cases. The Insepack-SQ3 tube (SQ3 tube) is an improved rapid-clotting blood collection tube coated with a combination of thrombin and silica. In this study, we examined fibrin formation in the SQ3 tube under various conditions. We also compared results for the SQ3 tube and the Insepack-S tube (S tube), a conventional clot activator blood collection tube. We found that fibrin formation in the SQ3 tube could be effectively avoided by inverting the tube a few times immediately after blood collection. SQ3 and S tubes produced comparable laboratory data for 40 items from 20 patients. Some items showed a significant difference but without clinical importance, while the SQ3 tube substantially reduced TAT for biochemical and infectious disease testing. Although further analysis is required to determine the effect of the addition of thrombin on other clinical laboratory tests, the SQ3 tube appears to be effective for reducing TAT for routine reporting of laboratory test results.