A study first of its kind questioned the reliability of finger-prick blood test result, as they showed huge variation in blood count in blood drops collected from different prick event from the same patient. Most of the pathologist rely on drawing blood from a vein for most of the diagnostic tests. However, sometimes blood are drawn for some tests, especially in low-resource settings.
The study, which appeared online this week in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, examined the variation between blood drops drawn from a single finger-prick. While working on the development of a low-cost platform for anemia, platelet and white blood cell testing in low-resource settings, they observed a huge difference in RBC, WBC, and platelet count in their test while using different prick data from a single patient. To investigate whether it was arising from the problem of their testing…
