Correlation between serum creatinine and fingerstick creatininemeasurement in adult patients admitted to the Emergency Department of Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine

Critically ill patients are frequently encountered in Emergency departments and requiring rapid diagnosis and treatment. It has been shown that fingerstick tests shorten examination and treatment times in emergency departments,. The aim of this study is to show the possible high correlation between fingerstick creatinine test and serum creatinine values measured in the laboratory. The research was designed as a single-center, prospective, observational study. 250 patients aged 18 and over, who were admitted to Hacettepe Hospital Adult Emergency Department between 12.12.2023-30.12.2023 and underwent serum biochemistry examination as required, were included in the study. The patients' admission complaints and vital signs, and existing diseases were recorded. In addition to the blood biochemistry tests requested by the patients' doctors, blood samples taken from the patients' fingertips were scanned using the I- STAT device and a creatinine cartridge. The data were analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 23.0 program. Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to examine the consistency between serum creatinine values measured in the laboratory and fingerstick creatinine values, and Bland-Altman chart was used to examine the consistency between measurements, and the type 1 error level was set as 0.05. 133 patients (54.16%) were women and 113 (45.94%) were men. The median age was found to be 55.5. A very high correlation was found between the measured values (ICC: 0.996). Patients when analyzed among themselves in terms of admission complaints, existing diseases, age, gender, admission vital signs and glomerular filtration rates, a high correlation was observed between fingertip creatinine and serum creatinine in each group. As a result, we recommend the early use of the fingerstick creatinine test in patients presenting to the Emergency Department, as it is easily applicable in examination and treatment management and has high correlation rates with laboratory values. Key words: fingerstick creatinine test, serum creatinine, Emergency Department