As you may have seen from the NEQAS reports, the BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo calprotectin assay is proving very popular, and its use has grown significantly over the last few years. Some of these laboratories were already existing BÜHLMANN calprotectin assay users that have switched technologies from the Quantum Blue® rapid test or the fCAL ELISA. However, a significant proportion are users who have transferred over to BÜHLMANN from other manufacturers kits due to the improved workflow solution that the BÜHLMANN CALEX extraction
device combined with the fCAL turbo assay provides.
One such user is Mark Busbridge, Lead Biomedical Scientist, Northwest London Pathology, Charing Cross Hospital who shares his experience:
Click Here to Read the Full Leading Edge Article“We have been analysing faecal samples for calprotectin in-house since 2011. As with most large multi-site NHS Trusts we have seen a significant increase in calprotectin workload during this period, with the Trust currently processing 70-80 samples per day.
Our principle methods have been the Phadia EliA I/II on the ImmunoCAP 100/250 analysers. However, with the increasing sample workload we were struggling to maintain the TAT with our current method, due to prolonged assay time (2 hours), significant ImmunoCAP 250 maintenance downtime and the lengthy sample extraction process.
So in 2018 we began investigating alternative methods. The BÜHLMANN fCAL® turbo calprotectin assay was selected, as this can be run on one of our principle analysers (Abbott Architect C8000). The BÜHLMANN CALEX extraction device process is simple and straightforward for staff to follow, resulting in a much improved workflow compared to the previous method, allowing more staff flexibility in this section.
Since going ‘live’ with the method in late 2019, we have noted improved precision in our inter batch re-extracted patient QC samples, good sample linearity and excellent repeatability and we are currently observing good agreement with our EQA method mean group.”
