Un utile riscontro occasionale di variante emoglobinica
Useful occasional report of a haemoglobin variant

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ABSTRACT

Useful occasional report of a haemoglobin variant

HbA1c is a marker used for diagnosis and management of diabetes. The clinical case described here describes a patient with Impaired Fasting Glucose who requires the measurement of HbA1c in order to define his metabolic status. The capillary electrophoresis (CE) method used for the HbA1c measurement was unable to return a result for HbA1c because of an atypical pattern which required further investigations. The presence of haemoglobin variants can interfere analytically with HbA1c measurements; also abnormalities in erythrocyte turnover can affect the clinical interpretation of HbA1c values. Therefore, it is important to recognize the presence of a haemoglobin variant, to evaluate whether the result returned from the CE instrument is compatible with the patient’s situation.
This case demonstrates the importance of implementing safety barriers to prevent errors arising from situations that, although already described and well known, may go unnoticed by the laboratory staff.

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