Please help. Blood sample not registering on the lab machine.

[jo]

We are at the hospital right now for a angioplasty surgery for my mom. So far they have poked my mom 5 times and collected 5 blood samples to test her electrolytes before the surgery. But none of them were successful as they are saying that my mom's blood doesn't read on any of the lab machines and reporting an error. So they cannot proceed with the surgery. Other patients blood samples work fine on the lab machines except my mom's. The doctors have no idea what is going on. I am crying out here. Has anyone experienced this before? Please help. Thank you.

[cassandra]

O dear jo please stop crying, very understandable but you need your enery for other things.
I have no idea either how it's poss that your mom's blood is not being 'read' by the machines. I've never heard of it. Maybe you've mentioned it before, but is the angioplasty urgent?

Lots of luck, and love, and it will work out you know, Cas

[jo]

O dear jo please stop crying, very understandable but you need your enery for other things.
I have no idea either how it's poss that your mom's blood is not being 'read' by the machines. I've never heard of it. Maybe you've mentioned it before, but is the angioplasty urgent?

Lots of luck, and love, and it will work out you know, Cas

She has been having pain in her fistula and she needs it anytime soon. But they didn't do the surgery today because of the erroring blood samples.

[Charlie B53]

Most likely at serious problem within the lab.  NOT following proper protocol cleaning and initializing the machines used.  I bet they call in the vendor Tech, they will get it up and running correctly.

[jo]

Most likely at serious problem within the lab.  NOT following proper protocol cleaning and initializing the machines used.  I bet they call in the vendor Tech, they will get it up and running correctly.

Thanks I am sure now that would be the case. But the nurse told me that they were able to run other patients samples in the same machines without any problems.. How is that possible?

[Charlie B53]

It does not make sense.  Usually when anything does not make sense it is cause by human error.  Finding out who, what, where, and how  that error was made can be a serious exercise in strict details.  But rest assured, it is an error.

Step-Mom is/was a microbacterialogist, when all else failed she had to fall back on her training and run test manually, the way it was done before they can to rely on machine to do the work.  Very few lab tech's have that training any longer.