title: Evaluation of the Greiner Bio-One serum separator BCA Fast Clot tube.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Current commercial tubes have difficulties in producing "true" serum from all blood samples even within the recommended clotting times. Hence, Becton Dickinson (BD) and now Greiner have produced tubes containing thrombin as the procoagulant to reduce the clotting time and increase the possibility of producing serum from anticoagulated blood samples.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Greiner BCA Fast Clot (GBBCAFC) tube was evaluated in a hospital environment using 40 participants, (30 healthy and 10 undergoing renal dialysis) for 32 analytes against the Greiner lithium heparin tube and the BD Rapid Serum Tubes (BD RST) tube measured on Beckman DxC 800 and DxI 800 analyzers. Clotting strength was also examined using thromboelastography (TEG).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The analytes results showed there was a very close agreement between the BD RST tube and GBBCAFC tube in comparison with lithium heparin plasma. The result comparison data showed equivalent performance with lower levels of hemolysis. The prolonged storage study also showed very similar agreement between the BD RST and the GBBCAFC tubes. Likewise, the TEG data showed there was very little difference in clotting ability between the tubes, and neither was capable of producing true serum from blood spiked with 2 U heparin/mL of blood.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study showed the GBBCAFC tube with the combination of the two procoagulants blood clotting activator and thrombin produced comparable performance with the lithium heparin plasma and the BD RST serum samples.
authors.affiliation: .
authors.forename: Goce
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dimeski
authors.affiliation: .
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Johnston
authors.affiliation: .
authors.forename: Paul P
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Masci
authors.affiliation: .
authors.forename: Kong-Nan
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: .
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D001777:Blood Coagulation; D001800:Blood Specimen Collection / Q000295:instrumentation*; D006801:Humans; D044967:Serum; D013916:Thrombelastography; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: BCA Fast Clot tube; anticoagulants; latent clotting; plasma; procoagulant; serum; thrombin