Semiautomatic Determination of Serum Glucose and Urea Using a New Three-channel Pipetting Machine.

T’ HE ECONOMICAL MANAGEMENT of a hospital laboratory requires the gradual replacement of manual by mechanical manipulations. Fully automatic devices are now available for serial determinations on blood arid other biologic fluids, but their use is sometimes limited by financial and space considerations, even to the big laboratories performing some hundred or more analyses of the same type every day. The semiautomatic analysis is a practical compromise for mediumsized laboratories. There are several kinds of “automatic pipets” available which are helpful for serial dilutions or dispensing of one reagent but which are of limited usefulness to the analyst having to perform no less than two samplings and the dispensing of six reagents for each analysis. The purpose of the present paper is to describe a semiautomatic procedure for blood glucose and blood urea, in which all of the sampling and reagent-dispensing is performed mechanically. This has become possible using the newly available three-channel pipetting machine, similar to the Fisher Dilumat, Model 100, after minor modifications. With this technic even an untrained analyst will perform analyses with speed and precision.