As a visible reference, a summary chart for the actual appearance of each differentially hemolyzed serum sample is provided in the journal article entitled "A Reference chart for clinical biochemical tests of hemolyzed serum samples" by Ni et al (2020), shown as Figure 4. In this article, Ni et. al. recorded the results of routine clinical biochemistry tests that made use of artificially hemolyzed samples across a hemolytic index. This chart shows the visual appearance of the hemolyzed samples with 0.1%, 0.3%, 1%, 3%, and 10% hemolysis. The results of 20 samples were averaged for each analyte and were summarized in a table in the chart, along with statistical analyses. Remarkably, the chart indicates analytes which are heavily affected by the hemolyzed samples, such as AST, LDH, TP (total protein), CK, and CK-MB.

Though, it is recommended that a specific reference chart for hemolyzed samples should be made by different individual laboratories to personalize the chart to the analyzing systems that they use. In this study, AU5400 (Beckman Coulter) and the Vitros FS 5,1 dry chemistry system (Ortho Clinical Diagnostics) were used for testing the biochemical tests while OC-SENSOR IO (Eiken Chemical Co., Ltd.) was used to measure the hemolyzed samples. If your laboratory uses the same analyzers or similarly functionching ones, this chart will be greatly beneficial to your laboratory.

Reference:

• Ni, J., Zhu, W., Wang, Y., Wei, X., Li, J., Peng, L., Zhang, K., & Bai, B. (2020). A reference chart for clinical biochemical tests of hemolyzed serum samples. Journal of Clinical Laboratory Analysis, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/jcla.23561