[OA-19] Comparing performance of two point-of-care testing (POCT) devices for haemoglobin measurement

Orakan Limpornpugdee, Chitnuphong Saengnil, Panatda Sohab, Sithee Sodmanee and Narisorn Kongruttachok

Department of Laboratory Medicine, Facolty of Medicine, Cholalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

Haemoglobin point-of-care test (POCT-Hb) devices can provide rapid evaluation for blood transfusion decisions in patients with critical bleeding at emergency, intensive care unit, and operating unit. The aim of this study was to compare the performance of two haemoglobin POC devices (HemoCue 201 DM and StatStrip Hb/Hct) in different specimen types. The first step, capillary, venous EDTA, and heparin blood samples were collected from healthy non-anaemic volunteers and anaemic patients. Next step, we evaluated the analytical performance of POCT-Hb devices and a central laboratory analyser was used for reference method. The final step, SPSS version 22.0 was used for statistical analysis. The total allowable error was used to determine the agreement. We found that HemoCue 201 DM performance was better than StatStrip Hb/Hct including heparin and capillary samples. Besides, HemoCue 201 DM has a good performance by using EDTA samples when compared with the central laboratory analyser. In conclusion, POCT-Hb devices are suitable instruments for haemoglobin level evaluation. However, capillary-finger prick blood might yield biased resolts concerning the individual technique of specimen collection and pre-analytical errors.

Keywords: analytical performance; haemoglobin; point-of-care test