For those of you that make PBS:

How are you testing the ph? If your response is ph paper, what are you using for QC?

Thanks!

We buy 3 pH buffer standards from our distributor (cheap)- low normal and high. We test the 3 buffers monthly along with our saline on pH paper. This works out well and we've had no issues.

This may be obvious but what is PBS?

PBS= Phosphate Buffered Saline

We buy 3 pH buffer standards from our distributor (cheap)- low normal and high. We test the 3 buffers monthly along with our saline on pH paper. This works out well and we've had no issues.

I need to pass this info along. I do not believe we QC the pH paper. Yikes!

We are next to hematology, so we borrow some of their urinalysis controls to QC pH paper.  However, most of the time we QC the saline on a blood gas analyzer.  They run QC regularly anyway.

and this is in reference to what standard ? help please.

We do pH testing on the PBS because the manufacturer requires it for our Echo analyzer.  I don't know if that is why others do it or not.

 

and this is in reference to what standard ? help please.

We test the pH also for our instrument, I have the certificate of analysis for the pH paper but we do not do QC on the paper. if we would start to have results out of the norm I would perform testing on the pH paper as part of troubleshooting. I was trying to find out if there is a standard (AABB, CAP, or otherwise), that states that pH paper needs to be quality controled.

We test it on our blood gas analyzer.

My thought is just that we QC all reagents used for patient testing. Saline is a reagent, so it gets QC'd. pH paper is also a reagent.