engleski

Frequency of lipemia and its preanalytical impact on iron determination in pediatric population - our experience

Introduction: Samples for iron measurement should be taken in the morning from patients in a fasting state and there can be significant interference from lipemia. As most of our hospital clinics operate until the late afternoon hours, requests for iron determination pour in throughout all day. Material and methods: The aim of this study was to determine the amount of lipemic samples accepted for iron determination in our laboratory over a period of three months. All samples were visually inspected for turbidity. For 41 lipemic samples time of sampling and patient age were noted. Iron concentration was determined two times in all lipemic sera. The first measurements from the original samples, and the second after the same samples were diluted 1:2 with normal saline. The iron level was determined on Olympus AU400 with a method for serum iron using TPTZ{; ; 2, 4, 6-Tri-(2-pyridyl)-5-triazine}; ; as the chromogen. To compare the values of iron measured before and after dilution with saline nonparametric Wilcoxon test for paired data was used. Results: 13% of samples were found visibly turbid. For 44% of lipemic samples sampling time was after 10 a.m. 71% of patients whose samples were lipemic were under 2 years of age. For 37% of lipemic sera a decision was made that results obtained from diluted samples are to be issued. Wilcoxon test did not show a significant difference between the two measures (p = 0.414). Conclusion: Turbidity was observed in a significant number of samples. In a sizable number of cases, the results obtained from diluted samples were issued. Almost half of the lipemic samples were taken after 10 a.m., and it is very likely that the cause of lipemia is food consummation. The actual iron level in these patients is questionable, since iron values decrease by 30% during the course of the day.

child; iron; lipemia; sampling time; interference

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