BD has launched the Vacutainer Rapid Serum Tube, a blood collection device designed to help acute healthcare facilities to rapidly analyse blood serum for patient diagnosis.
The device features the BD Hemogard safety-engineered closure, which enhances healthcare worker safety and aids compatibility with clinical analysers utilising front-end automation.
'Technologies such as the BD Vacutainer Rapid Serum Tube can help reduce the time it takes to get answers from blood tests and have a significant impact on patient care and hospital productivity,' said Ana Stankovic, managing director and vice-president of medical and scientific affairs and clinical operations for preanalytical systems at BD Diagnostics.
With a five-minute clotting time and as little as three minutes of centrifugation (at 4,000g), the Vacutainer Rapid Serum Tube can offer savings of up to 32 minutes of laboratory time, according to the company.
Standard serum separator tubes require a 30-minute clot time followed by 10 minutes of centrifugation before clinical laboratory professionals can begin analysing the sample and getting test results.
'By taking essentially one sixth of the time of standard serum tubes to clot, the BD Vacutainer Rapid Serum Tube is poised to help facilities significantly improve patient throughput, especially in places such as emergency rooms where decisions to admit or treat patients are often based on blood-test results,' said Stankovic.
The 5ml-draw, 13 x 100ml plastic sterile blood collection tube combines a thrombin-based additive with gel technology, which creates a high-quality serum sample by minimising fibrin formation and haemolysis.
Haemolysis and clotted specimens are two common examples of sub-optimal quality, both of which can lead to laboratory errors.
Studies conducted by BD show a 59 per cent reduction of haemolysis and fibrin strand formation in the Vacutainer Rapid Serum Tube versus the serum control tube.
This observed sample quality improvement may help to lower the number of repeat collections by phlebotomy, which in turn can increase the productivity of the laboratory.
