Capillary blood, overcoming dinosaur and unicorn stories

Senior specialists will remember the IVY method, or bleeding time test, a method used in the early 20th century to evaluate primary hemostasis. At present, this method sleeps in old books, as ancient and antique as dinosaurs. Nowadays, dried blood spot (DBS) analysis is a widely known method used in clinical laboratories worldwide, mainly in neonatal screening and in pharmacokynetic, toxicological and infectious disease studies. By this method, some drops of blood (some microliters) are drawn from the heel or finger via a relatively painless puncture and placed onto a designated filter paper. With this simple method, the blood sample is easily shipped to the laboratory, which makes this technique very adequate for neonatal screening. The World Health Organization recommends the use of DBS for screening for infectious diseases such as hepatitis B, C, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in countries with deficient healthcare services [1]. However, although the majority of blood samples – virtually all liquid – are analyzed in the central laboratory, the use of DBS is anecdotal.

CITA DEL ARTÍCULO  Adv Lab Med. 2022 Dec 19;3(4):317-320.  doi: 10.1515/almed-2022-0115.  eCollection 2022 Dec