Evaluation of BD Vacutainer SST™ II Plus tubes for common tumor marker tests by Roche Diagnostics Modular E 170 analyzer.

Serum separator tubes were introduced 35 years ago and were widely used in the clinical laboratory in China for routine collection of blood because of providing a closed system that allowed for collection, transport, processing, sampling, and storage of specimens. This type of tubes facilitated rapid separation of serum from cellular constituents of blood and also prevented hemolysis upon prolonged storage. However, there were some limitations associated with gel tubes (i.e., gel and analyte stability). In order to circumvent these problems, BD released a new serum separator tube containing a new gel (BD SST(™) II Plus). We investigated the performance of BD SST(™) II Plus tubes for tumor marker tests using BD Serum Glass tubes as controls. Equivalence between the BD SST(™) II Plus and BD Serum Glass tubes was demonstrated for all analytes at initial time. Also, all analytes remained stable when stored in BD SST(™) II Plus tubes up to 72  hr. Concentration of neuron-specific enolase tended to increase with preservation time up to 72  hr in BD Serum Glass tubes. We conclude that BD SST(™) II Plus was suitable for collection of blood and storage of serum for tumor marker tests.