2
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Critically Elevated Potassium in a 55-Year-Old Female With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

      1 , 2
      Laboratory medicine
      Oxford University Press (OUP)

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Hyperkalemia in specimens from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) may be due to tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) or specimen processing. This report describes a 55-year-old Caucasian woman with CLL who presented to an outside hospital with hyperkalemia and was transferred to a second hospital. Initial evaluation on the core laboratory chemistry analyzer (the VITROS 5600) and the ABL90 FLEX blood gas analyzer showed markedly elevated levels of potassium (K+). TLS was subsequently diagnosed, and dialysis was initiated. However, follow-up K+ measurements in whole blood (WB) yielded low levels that were unexpected after a single dialysis treatment. We then discovered that the initially elevated K+ level was from centrifuged plasma specimens and concluded that it indicated pseudohyperkalemia, likely from centrifugation. This case demonstrates that medical teams need be alert to potentially false K+ results in patients with elevated white blood cell counts. WB specimens are preferable, and steps to minimize trauma to the specimen and immediate analysis using blood gas instruments are recommended.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Lab Med
          Laboratory medicine
          Oxford University Press (OUP)
          1943-7730
          0007-5027
          Jul 05 2018
          : 49
          : 3
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Department of Pathology and Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.
          [2 ] Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
          Article
          4955995
          10.1093/labmed/lmy009
          29608741
          16279000-a2ff-4fb7-a82e-9550abf1866b
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article