Rapid system of microchemical analysis for the clinical laboratory.

THE CLINICAL CHEMIST 111 charge of a routine biochemistry laboratory appears to be faced with an insoluble dilemma. At a time when there is an increasing demand from the medical profession for more biochemical tests per patient, which would seem to require the use of microprocedures, he finds it almost impossible to obtain personnel with the requisite technical skill. One way out of this dilemma would appear to be the use of completely automatic technics such as the autoanalyzer (1). The use of this kind of automation would solve the problem of performing the more frequent determinations, such as blood glucose, urea nitrogen, etc., in the larger laboratories. Because of their present high unit cost, their utilization in the smaller laboratories is not economically feasible. In addition, automation does not solve the problem of increasing the efficiency of performance of the other less frequently requested biochemical tests. It is the purpose of this paper to present a system of analysis for the clinical laboratory which would permit the employment of microchemical procedures on a semiautomatic basis. This system is composed of five basic elements: 1. The use of siliconated-heparinized plasma (2) in place of serum or whole blood, so that determinations may be started within a few minutes after the sample reaches the laboratory. 2. The use of the calibrated pipet tip-buret technic for measuring a constant volume of each plasma sample and of standards and blanks (3, 4). This enables measurements to be made on 0.20-nil. or less of fluid by personnel with little technical skill.