Hi All-

We have a Beckman DXC600i and use greiner blood collection tubes.  A few months ago we noticed that both our MC and CC DX sample probes are getting coated with gel from the SST tubes and are actually sticky to the touch.  The gel also gets stuck inside out probes and sometimes affects the results... especially glucose.  We have had Greiner here and Beckman here and they can't seem to find anything wrong with the tubes or our analyzer. 

 I just wanted to know if there is anybody out there having these same issues?  Thanks so much

Have you contacted Beckman to see if your kind of tubes are validated by Beckman for Closed Tube Sampling (CTS)  ?  I think I remember them saying in training that some tubes were (BD) and some weren't .  If that is the case, you may have solved your problem at step one.

Are you putting short tubes on non-dedicated racks, causing the sample probe to go further into the sample (into the gel, thinking it is a 7ml or larger tube) to aspirate before stopping?  Is your level sense detector turned on?  That can be disabled or may be broken.

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions.....

Greiner tubes are validated by Beckman for use on the analyzer.

The level sensor is turned on.... has been replaced.... it has been ok'd that it is working correctly.  We had beckman come in to see how we were loading samples.... our reserved and non-reserved racks are being used correctly.

 If you think of anything else, please write back. Thanks