2021 · BMJ open diabetes research & care · open access
Validation and feasibility of a postal system for remote monitoring of HbA1c
Cross et al.
The finding, in our words
Capillary blood collected in BD Microtainer tubes remained stable for up to 12 days at room temperature and gave accurate HbA1c results when posted back, with high return rates and patient willingness to reuse the system.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This proof-of-concept study demonstrated that patients with inflammatory bowel disease could successfully perform capillary blood microsampling at home with high analytical success rates, and a majority preferred this decentralised approach over hospital venous draws.
Although most kidney transplant recipients successfully collected capillary blood samples at home, haemolysis and transport conditions affected analyte stability. Agreement with venous sampling was acceptable for haemoglobin and creatinine, but potassium and haematocrit exceeded total allowable error limits.
In a cohort of 62 participants evaluating home self-collection with the TassoPlus device, 38 returned samples, with 29% excluded due to insufficient plasma volume below 200 ΔL. Although viral load measurements in adequate samples correlated well with conventional testing (r = 0.800), the high failure rate and missed detection in low-volume viremic samples indicate that further technical refinements are necessary before clinical adoption.
A head-to-head of four upper-arm capillary devices, including TAP Micro Select, versus fingerstick and venous: experience and performance varied by device with none clearly superior, while analyte correlations with venous were similar across all.
A vacuum-assisted upper-arm device collected a mean 538 µL and met the volume target in 85.5% of cases; 17 of 19 analytes met CLIA agreement with venous, with pain lower than fingerstick.