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to hear from Helen Lewis, Special Coagulation Operations Manager, about the Luminometer and how it will benefit the Basingstoke & North Hampshire Hospital.

Hampshire Hospitals are a Comprehensive Care Haemophilia Centre providing an extensive Haemostasis and Thrombosis Service, for the local population and tertiary referrals. The Special Coagulation laboratory provide the Diagnostic support for these patients. The investigation of platelet function disorders requires highly specialised scientific input and appropriate analytical investigations on fresh blood samples, which have a limited viability of four hours. The Laboratory Diagnostic service are able to undertake all investigations locally except one, the quantitation of ATP and ADP within the platelet, also known as platelet nucleotides. Currently these samples are sent off site to London for analysis and it can take up to three weeks to receive the results.  

The Junior LB9509 is a small tube luminometer with integrated software.  A Luminometer is an instrument capable of detecting photons of light that are emitted from either a chemical or enzyme reaction. Luminescence is  a very sensitive detection mode, individual photons are collected by a detector – photodiode, quantified as Relative Light Units(RLU) and is directly proportional to the concentration of the amount of luminescent material in the sample.

Multiple risks arise when samples are referred off site for analysis: non arrival of couriers, journey delays- ever increasing due to motorway delays, non-viable/aged samples on arrival and delay in report receipt. With the purchase of this equipment the quantitation of ATP/ADP can be repatriated locally, providing the result same day, thus improving the Turnaround Time of patient results and Diagnosis. This assay is currently unavailable at any other Hospital in the Southern Pathology Network and could be offered to other sites too.

The Luminometer would be used weekly for four samples, approximately two hundred patients per annum, with capacity to meet any further expansion of service.  The equipment is an “Open system” so has potential to be used for other assays in the future too.