If there is such thing as a “cult favorite” article amongst Emergency Physicians, right now, this probably qualifies as the one receiving its 15 minutes of fame on Twitter.
If there is any singular agony known to all Emergency Physicians it is the inability to obtain urine samples in a timely manner. Sometimes, this is for the urinalysis. Other times, this is for the qualitative pregnancy test result. If only there were a better way….
And, perhaps, there is. This is a two year study of sensitivity/specificity of the POC pregnancy test using the Beckman Coulter ICON 25 – comparing the performance of using urine vs. whole blood, with laboratory quantitative bHCG >5 as the gold standard. 95.3% sensitivity for the urine test, 95.8% sensitivity for whole blood, with 100% specificity. Most of the false negatives were due to beta hCG < 100.
Interesting alternative!
“Substituting whole blood for urine in a bedside pregnancy test”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21875776
I have gone through the link, first time reading this type of concept to check pregnancy.
http://www.thepregnancyzone.com/category/tests-and-procedures/
I have gone through the link, first time reading this type of concept to check pregnancy.
http://www.thepregnancyzone.com/category/tests-and-procedures/