What Does Point Of Care Mean?

“Point of care“ testing (POCT), also known as bedside testing, involves any type of diagnostic test that isn’t done in the laboratory. More specifically, this type of testing is performed as close as possible to the patient, be it at their bedside or near them — hence the name “point of care”. Advances in modern medicine have made it possible to analyze a myriad of health parameters in a quick and simple way to make screening, triage, diagnosis, treatment, and prognoses as effective as possible.

What Does Point Of Care Mean?

Unlike the classic laboratory approach, which involves a preanalytical, analytical, and post-analytical phase, POCT significantly lowers the risk of potential mistakes by eliminating all but the analytical phase.

Point of care patient testing makes it possible for a health expert to make a quick critical care decision. Point of care testing is performed in life-threatening situations. This includes when the potential test results call for an urgent modification of treatment plans. POCT may also be used if taking the sample and receiving results from the lab takes too long.

Advantages of Point of Care Testing

POCT significantly reduces the time that passes between clinical tests and the arrival of results. This period is known as a turn-around-time (TAT). In some critical medical conditions, such as heart attacks, or hypoglycemia in diabetics, a similar term, therapeutic TAT, involves the period from when the patient is admitted to a healthcare facility until proper treatment is implemented. Therapeutic TAT is used more commonly since it is of far more value to medical care personnel from a clinical point of view.

What all point of care diagnostic tests have in common is that they are simple to use. However, there is a difference between tests that patients can buy in a pharmacy and be trained to use on their own and those that need to be performed by a qualified professional inside a healthcare facility (urine tests, or some complicated health parameters).

What parameters can be tested using point of care testing?

Depending on the type of test performed, POCT can be used either by a civilian (for personal use), or inside a health facility, which may, of course, differ between countries. For example, while a patient can check their blood glucose levels at home, some tests are to be performed primarily in different healthcare units, with some examples being:

Primary health care facilities:
- urine analysis,
- pregnancy tests,
- testing for Chlamydia
Pharmacies:
- cholesterol levels,
- pregnancy tests,
- INR (international normalized ratio), a test that measures the time it takes te blood to clot,
- Hemoglobin A1c tests, measuring the average levels of blood sugar over the last two to three months
Emergency medical services:
- blood alcohol content,
- cardiac biomarkers used to diagnose a heart attack,
- D-dimer in order to prove blood clotting,
- acetaminophen and salicylate levels, measuring the concentration of these potentially toxic drugs.
Operating rooms:
- ionized calcium levels, as well as concentrations of hormones produced by the parathyroid gland, in order to check the activity of that gland
Intensive care units:
- arterial blood test gas analysis used to determine the presence of a range of clinical conditions, from decreased lung activity to kidney failure,
- electrolyte test, which tells if certain minerals and salts, such as sodium and potassium are in their normal range,
- lactate blood test, in order to prove high levels of lactic acid, most commonly caused by an inadequate amount of oxygen in the cell and tissues.

Point of Care Testing Omaha

One of the most important criteria for point of care (POC) testing systems is that they must reproduce results comparable to the laboratory testing. POCT has proven to be extremely helpful, especially in terms of speed and availability. However, this type of testing should only be performed if there is a justifiable reason not to use the laboratory. The reason is that point of care tests bring many “hidden”, such as maintenance, staff education, or reagents, which demand a lot of money. Further advances in technology will make these tests even more widely available, while also being able to keep up with a quality comparable to laboratories, because, in the end, quality is the main parameter we should care about.

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