Great knowledge of blood drawing! The color of blood collection vessels has different meanings
To draw blood, you must find the blood vessel before inserting the needle. Some people’s blood vessels can be easily found, but others took nine cattle and two tigers to beat and beat, and the faint cyan blood vessels appeared on the surface of the skin. When drawing blood, we often see nurses holding colorful blood collection vessels. These colors have different meanings. This article will take you through the color classification of vacuum blood collection vessels and their respective medical applications.
Material and application of vacuum blood collection vessel
The materials of blood collection vessels mainly include sterile glass or plastic. Because there are many items that can be tested for blood, in order to distinguish clearly, we can know the test purpose of the contained blood according to the color marked on the tube. In addition, anticoagulants or coagulants may be added to the inner wall of some blood collection vessels to help or avoid blood coagulation. Through the color marking on the blood collection vessels, it can also clearly determine whether these additives are contained in the tubes. The following is the color classification of vacuum blood collection vessels:
- Purple tube cover: this tube contains ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid, which can chelate free calcium in blood and prevent blood coagulation. The main uses are: whole blood cell count, blood typing, hematology test, heme protein electrophoresis test, abnormal cell or malaria parasite test.
- Red tube cover: this tube may not contain any additives. It is mainly used for blood bank test, serology or serum test, such as glucose, triglyceride and amylase. Due to the absence of anticoagulants, haemorrhagic serum can be dissociated from plasma under the process of blood coagulation, and has other medical uses.
- Green tube cover: the tube contains heparin potassium or heparin lithium, which can also prevent blood coagulation. It is mainly used for plasma, chromosome and bone marrow testing.
- Gray tube cover: potassium oxalate contained in the tube belongs to anticoagulant, while sodium fluoride can inhibit the glycolysis of red blood cells, so that the extracted blood will not affect the blood glucose content during preservation. Therefore, it is most often used to test glucose and lactic acid in blood.
- Light blue tube cover: containing 3.2% sodium citrate as anticoagulant. Similar to the chelation mentioned above, sodium citrate will also absorb calcium ions in blood and become a complex called calcium citrate. Blood without calcium ions will not coagulate easily. The main purpose of this tube is to test various coagulation factors and prothrombin time.
- Dark blue tube cover: heparin sodium or ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid added in the tube is helpful to determine the content of metal substances in blood, such as mercury, zinc, copper and lead, as well as relevant tests of other poisons.
- Black tube cover: it contains 3.8% sodium citrate as anticoagulant. It is mainly used to detect the sedimentation rate of red blood cells and test the sedimentation rate of red blood cells.
- Yellow tube cover: sodium polyanisole brain sulfonate and glucose citrate are anticoagulants that may be added in this tube. In addition to detecting DNA and identifying parent-child relationship, sodium polyanisole brain sulfonate also helps to stabilize the state of microorganisms in the blood and slow down or inhibit their proliferation or phagocytosis.
- Brown tube cover: Generally speaking, the additive in the glass tube is sodium heparin, while the plastic tube is dipotassium ethylenediamine tetraacetate, which is mainly used to detect the lead content in blood.
References
Vacutainer and Their Use in Blood Sampling. https://medcaretips.com/vacutainer/
Common blood collection tubes, their additives and laboratory uses. https://laboratoryinfo.com/common-blood-collection-tubes-their-additives-and-laboratory-uses/
