Evaluation of the Syva ETS Plus urine drug and serum ethanol analyzer

The Syva ETS is an automated system designed for analysis of drugs of abuse in urine. Recently, the Syva Company has upgraded this system to the ETS Plus, which is capable of analyzing ethanol in urine, serum, or plasma. We evaluated the new ETS Plus for urine screening of barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine metabolite, opiates, and phencyclidine. Results of 505 patient sample assays obtained by ETS Plus were compared with those of ETS. There were only four discrepant results which had absorbance rates close to the low calibrator cutoff values. The within-run precision of the ETS Plus Ethyl Alcohol Assay yielded a CV of 2.6% at a target value of 1.00 g/L (1.06 +/- 0.03 g/L, n = 32) and a CV of 3.2% at a target value of 0.40 g/L (0.42 +/- 0.01 g/L, n = 30). The linear regression analysis of 30 patient serum ethanol results by the ETS Plus and by gas chromatography yielded y = 0.939 x + 0.03 g/L. The software modifications in the new ETS Plus allow the accurate quantitation of ethanol in serum and reliable detection of drugs of abuse within the same batch.