2015 Volume 64 Issue 1 Pages 78-84
A preliminary assessment was conducted before implementing the RAPIDPoint® 500 blood gas system (RP500), a maintenance-free system using cartridges, to investigate its fundamental performance. We compared RP500 with the RAPIDLab 1265 blood gas system (RL1265) in terms of the following ten parameters: pH, pCO2, pO2, tHb, and levels of Na+, K+, Cl-, Ca2+, glucose (Glu) and lactate (Lac). We also compared RP500 with the LABOSPECT 008 biochemical analyzer (LAB) in terms of the levels of Na+, K+, Cl-, and Glu, and with Dimension (Dim) in terms of Lac level. Although repeatability and intralaboratory precision were satisfactory, Lac levels tended to start increasing gradually after a cartridge was inserted into the system. RP500 results showed good correlations with RL1265 results and also showed favorable correlations for plasma samples analyzed using LAB and Dim. For this maintenance-free RP500 system, users only need to replace a wash cartridge once every ten days and a reagent cartridge once every 28 days. By using this system, users can feel much less burdened than with conventional analyzers. In addition, RP500 can be used concurrently with the Automatic Quality Control (AQC) cartridge and the RAPIDComm data management system, which enables the centralized management of blood gas analyzers that are compatible with RAPIDComm and located in different places, such as ICUs, emergency medical care centers and hospital wards, by connecting these systems on a network. RAPIDComm-connected analyzers can be monitored and remotely provided troubleshooting as required, which may help users reduce or eliminate the time for moving around in a facility and will consequently be laborsaving and contribute an efficient laboratory environment.
