Lactate testing for Sepsis

I think you will be hard pressed to find a waived option for lactate, especially capillary.  I remember a few years back when lactate testing in the field (pre-hospital, ambulance service) was getting a lot of press that there were POC devices devoted to it, but like you, I am not seeing them now.  Quick Google search shows Nova Biomedical having a device but it says N/A in North America.  We use both the Abbott iSTAT CG4+ cartridge (includes lactate) in an ED setting (venous/arterial only) and a wireless, mobile Radiometer blood gas analyzer everywhere else.  In ED they are generally drawing during IV/line start procedure and simple venipuncture elsewhere.  I had not heard of any particular difficulties collecting venous samples on septic patients, so there's been no need to consider capillary collection (CG4+ cartridge prohibits capillary collection in their IFU).

Hello,

Nova Biomedical has a handheld Lactate test StatStrip Lactate that is certified for use in the US.  The Express unit is not.  The analyzer has the same configuration as the StatStrip Glucometer.  Meter uses venous or arterial samples...not capillary. Not sure if this is a waived or moderately complex analyzer.
https://novabiomedical.com/statstrip-lactate/index.php#:~:text=The%20StatStrip%20Lactate%20Hospital%20Meter,numerous%20problems%20for%20bedside%20testing.
Good Luck

Good catch Amanda - I didn't even see there was 2 analyzers there!

Thank you all for you input.  We are looking into smaller tubes for the GEMs.  Hopefully this can be accomplished.

We use the EPOC for POC blood gas and Lactic Acid. It only takes about 90 ul of blood, and they do make capillary collection tubes with adapters, although our NICU is the only place that uses the capillary collection tubes.
We also run Lactics on our GEM5000. We don't require them to be iced if they are here within 15 minutes.

Do any of you have a protocol you can share with us?  Our cutoff at 1.2 on the iSTAT places many of our normal population in the range for the protocol.
Thank you in advance!
Shannon Walden