Unexpected and Unusual Results; Unusual Requests

In the clinical toxicology laboratory, approximately 40% of the workload is usually serum alcohols and the remaining workload deals with drug screens, volatiles, other therapeutic drugs, over-the-counter drugs, and plant and animal toxins. GC is the gold standard for serum/blood alcohol determination. However, to determine serum alcohols in a busy medical center by GC is slow, costly, and requires professional time of an experienced technologist (1). With the discovery of enzymatic methods of serum alcohol determination, the tests became rapid and inexpensive. Once the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this method, several manufacturers came up with reagents and instruments to measure serum alcohol levels. The enzymatic method follows the reaction principle as given in the following.