Diatron Abacus 5 - 19 The Daily Routine

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representative for recycling, or dispose of them according to local laws or regulations governing the disposal of
electronic waste materials.
19 The Daily Routine
In this chapter a typical daily routine is described. Your daily routine may differ from the one described here. This
chapter also contains some tricks and tips. The description below assumes that the laboratory works during a
single daily shift only.
The daily routine:
 Power-up and start-up the ‘Abacus 5’ analyzer (see Chapter 6.2.2 for details)
 Check reagent container levels and start obtain new reagents from storage if necessary
 Perform the pneumatics initialization and blank measurement (tap the sampling tube icon)
 Collect the blood samples
 Ensure that the correct anticoagulant tubes (K
3
-EDTA) are used
 Ensure that the samples ages are within the 7 hours of processing limit
 Power on the Autosampler (if installed)
 Perform the QC procedure as scheduled
 Start the measurements in manual or automatic mode (see chapter 1 for details)
 Validate and release the measurement results according to your procedures
 Perform any necessary maintenance (see chapter 19 for details)
 Shut down the instrument (see chapter 7.3 for details)
 Clean the instrument (see chapter 5.3)
Notes:
Blank measurements:
 If you want to check whether the reagent path was contaminated during reagent container replacement,
then perform 4 to 5 blank measurements before accepting the blank result. The reagents from the
internal reservoirs should be fully consumed before the new reagent reaches the measurement system.
 If you receive the samples in batches and more than 2 hours have elapsed between the last sample of the
previous batch and the first sample of the next batch, then it is a good practice to repeat the blank
measurement.
Quality Control:
 Perform QC measurements according to your local regulations.
 Monitor the expiration date and stability after first use of the QC material.
 If there are more than one hematology instruments in your laboratory then it is also a good practice to
measure the same human sample across all the instruments to compare their performance. Use multiple
parallel runs to reduce the effect of random error (CV%).
 We suggest performing at least one blank measurement before starting QC measurements.
Calibration:
 Calibrate the ‘Abacus 5’ according to laboratory regulations.
 Calibration should be performed with every new control material lot, or if QC results or comparison of
results to other instruments shows significant deviation in measurement results.