We got the following request from a new client on “pooling specimens”. This something others have also asked for earlier.
Your feedback are welcome. Do you have similar needs? How are they different from the below?
I have collected 4 Serum Separator Tubes with 5mLs of whole blood per tube. I want to specify a unique tube ID for each primary specimen, so: SST1, SST2, SST3 SST4. After collecting and accepting receipt of the tubes, I’m now going to pool all the tubes together for a total of 20mLs of whole blood. I’m processing the total whole blood for the derivative type: serum. I’ll create 10 aliquots total @ 0.2mL/aliquot.
I’d like to create a package requirement of the primary specimen: Serum Separator Tube and specify that 4 tubes will be collected (each with a unique ID). Then the derivative of the the 4 tubes = serum, and the aliquot total from all the whole blood is 10 aliquots.
We typically will draw 5 sodium heparin tubes, and that equates to 50ccs of whole blood…if we could, we’d draw this into one giant tube, but no such thing exists. All 50ccs of blood are used in one procedure to isolate cells (derivative) and then create multiple aliquots of those cells for cryopreservation.