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False-positive urine pregnancy tests--clinicians as detectives
Rolando Valenzuela1, Kenneth V Iserson, Damien Punguyire
1Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey, USA.
The Pan African Medical Journal
|November 29, 2011
Summary
Improperly cleaned, reused test tubes led to false positive pregnancy tests in an emergency ward. This highlights the critical need for strict laboratory cleaning and quality control, especially in resource-limited settings.
Area of Science:
- Clinical diagnostics
- Laboratory medicine
- Reproductive health
Background:
- Accurate pregnancy diagnosis is vital for women with abdominal pain.
- Unreliable diagnostic tests waste resources and can lead to harmful interventions.
- Resource-poor settings often face challenges with laboratory procedures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the cause of repeated false-positive urine pregnancy tests.
- To identify laboratory process flaws impacting diagnostic accuracy.
- To emphasize the importance of quality control in diagnostic testing.
Main Methods:
- Investigated the laboratory's process for urine pregnancy tests (UPreg).
- Identified reuse of inadequately cleaned test tubes as the cause.
- Traced contamination to residual high ß-human chorionic gonadotropin (ß-HCG) levels from maternity ward samples.
Main Results:
- Four false-positive UPreg tests occurred within one week.
- Inadequate cleaning of reused test tubes caused false positives.
- Residual ß-HCG from previous samples contaminated new tests.
Conclusions:
- Laboratory reuse of test tubes without proper cleaning causes false-positive pregnancy test results.
- Strict adherence to cleaning protocols and quality control is essential for accurate diagnostic testing.
- These procedures are particularly critical in resource-constrained healthcare environments.
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