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Blood transfusion safety covers all stages from prescription of immuno-haematological examinations until the completion of the transfusion. According to the 05/11/2006 Afssaps' decision on good transfusion practices, transfusions should not be given at night unless the patient is actively bleeding or has some other urgent clinical need. A retrospective study was used to assess the proportion of transfusions at night. Through this professional practice evaluation, we analyze the reasons leading to perform transfusions at late hours, in order to reduce errors and improve safety for patients.

The Unicel DXC 600 is an automated analytical system from Beckman Coulter for measuring usual biochemistry parameters (electrolytes, substrates and enzymatic activities), therapeutic drugs, drugs of abuse and specific proteins. According to the "Société française de biologie clinique (SFBC)" validation protocol, we tested the following parameters: electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride, total CO2), substrates (uric acid, calcium, phosphate, glucose, creatinine, urea, cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, bilirubin, iron, triglycerides), enzymes (ALAT, ASAT, amylase, CK, GGT, LDH, lipase, ALP), total proteins and specific proteins (albumin, CRP, haptoglobin). The results confirm the excellent analytical performances regarding imprecision. The comparison study shows differences between values obtained with Unicel DXC 600 and Integra 800 (Roche diagnostics), leading to the use of correcting factors for some parameters.

In this article, we report a case of metabolic coma with acidosis and elevated anion gap. The etiological investigation requires laboratory findings because clinical features are not enough specific in the early stage of intoxication. Measurement of methanol and formic acid, its toxic metabolite, is useful in confirming the diagnosis. The major differential diagnosis to discuss is ethylene glycol poisoning. Methanol poisoning is rare but potentially fatal; the toxicity of methanol is clearly correlated to the degree of metabolic acidosis. Formic acid accumulation is also associated with an increased risk for ocular and neurologic dysfunction. For preventing permanent visual damage, the acidosis should be corrected by antidotal treatment or haemodialysis in severe poisoning.