In today’s setting, one of the great challenges is to fulfil the proper
execution of measurements and compliance of various laboratory
investigations, with the internal and external quality control

specifications. Our aim was to compare the values of the highly critical
parameter potassium(K+) determined with Point of Care Testing
(POCT) devices and central laboratory analysers (ZL) in a highly
vulnerable setting of an emergency department in a tertiary care
hospital and to assess the quality of POC devices performance.

Aim:To find correlation between potassium (K+) determined with Point of
Care Testing (POCT) devices and central laboratory analysers (ZL).

Settings and Design: Prospective observational study, conductedin
524 patients from June 2019 to December 2019 at Dept of Emergency
Medicine ,Amrita Institute of Medical Science (AIMS), Kochi.

Methodsand Material: Data collected from patients satisfying inclusion criteria,24*7 coming Emergency Medicine Department, POCT- (K+) diagnosisis done with System RadiometerABL800 &central laboratory ( K+- ZL)measured with COBAS 800 &(K+) using indirect ion selective electrode(ISE) method. Statistical analysis used: To test the statistical significance of the correlation between K+- ZL & POC-K+, Pearson correlation method is used. To find the agreement between two measurements, intraclasscorrelation coefficient is calculated. P <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The correlation between both the parameters (POC-K+&K+-ZL) was highly significant (r = 0.536, p<0.001) (Fig 2) and the results were showing excellent agreement between POC-Hb & HB-ZL(ICC= 0.536,95% confidence interval (0.47,0.59).

Conclusions:Our comparison of POC devices with central laboratory potassium determination in emergency patients at a tertiary care hospital showed a highly significant correlation between the two analysed potassium concentration measurement methods, using POC devices and the indirection selective electrode (ISE) method

Keywords: Point of care devices; Point of care potassium; Emergency
Medicine.