Hart Biologicals has recently been selected to supply its renowned Thrombistat equipment to one of the country’s leading, pioneering cancer treatment centres.
The London-based hospital which operates services across two sites in West and South London now have installed Thrombistat MC4 mechanical coagulation, 4-channel systems in their laboratories.
Paul Bates, Sales Manager at Hart Biologicals, said: “We are very pleased that this world-renowned hospital, which provides specialist cancer treatment services not only for London but for patients from around the country, has decided to adopt our Thrombistat MC4 as one of the systems to deliver coagulation testing services from their laboratories.
“The MC4 is a very versatile piece of equipment which will be used here to provide the laboratory with an alternative method of testing those sometimes ‘difficult’ samples which cannot be otherwise determined on the laboratory mainline analysers.”
The Thrombistat family of analysers uses a physical, mechanical method to detect the endpoint in the clot formation process as opposed to the widely used photo-optical method used on high-throughput systems.
Paul added: “It is a common problem. Some samples will just not give a result on the current generation of optical mainline machines because of interference from other substances in the samples. This can be because the samples have become coloured during blood collection by the presence of haemoglobin or those where there are high levels of fatty materials present. There are other substances that can cause problems. The only recourse is to move to an alternative detection system that does not use a light beam for detection.
“The problem modern laboratories face is that that the external bodies which provide accreditation of the testing standards used in labs want to see robust testing methods in place which can fully determine all samples. The complementary use of Thrombistat provides this assurance in the coagulation setting.
“Our Thrombistat coagulation testing equipment is used widely in hospitals however because of the detection method employed, whole blood can also be used as the sample which means the equipment can also be used outside the laboratory near to the patient. We have hundreds of systems now employed out in the community supporting anticoagulation clinics in GP surgeries, pharmacies and healthcare centres around the UK.
“Thrombistat benefits from the lowest possible running costs available and can be used in both the laboratory and community setting. Used in conjunction with the Manchester Capillary Reagent Kit, the ‘wet chemistry’ approach can be used to determine results from capillary blood samples taken by a finger-prick to control and manage patients requiring anticoagulation support."
The sample is mixed with the pre-prepared reagent under temperature-controlled conditions and Thrombistat provides accurate, reliable near-patient results in under two minutes. Units are available as single, four and ten channel options and enjoy excellent back-up from our technical support team based at the company’s headquarters in the North East of England.
Hart Biologicals offers a complete range of instrumentation, reagents and consumables for use by anticoagulation clinics involved in the measurement of INR values.
You can find more products from Hart Biologicals on the reagents or instruments page
