Your lab focus. A comparison of blood collection in glass versus plastic vacutainers on results of esoteric coagulation assays.

We compared the BD standard glass sodium citrate Vacutainer to the BD plastic sodium citrate Vacutainer, evaluating 19 esoteric coagulation analytes, including comparisons, mean, and standard deviation for 20 normal donor plasma samples.Only 1 analyte, the thrombin time, was found to vary depending on the collection tube used.Laboratories should establish separate reference intervals for plastic and glass Vacutainers for the thrombin time assay. Other esoteric coagulation analytes do not need separate reference intervals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]