Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Review Flashcards

A collection of vocabulary-style flashcards covering clinical chemistry, laboratory safety, mathematics, and instrumentation terminology based on practice examination material.

Sodium fluoride

An additive used in specimen collection to prevent glycolysis.

Glycolysis

The conversion of glucose or other hexoses into lactate or pyruvate.

Corex

An alumina-silicate glass that is at least $6$ times stronger than borosilicate and is resistant to alkaline etching and scratching.

NIST Certificate Class A

The certification required for volumetric pipettes and flasks by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Ostwald-folin pipette

A pipette with a bulb close to the delivery tip used for measuring viscous fluids.

EDTA

The anticoagulant used in lavender top blood collection tubes which works by chelating calcium.

Biuret reaction

A reaction used for protein determination that depends on the presence of at least $2$ peptide linkages.

Fluorescence

The process where molecules emit a photon at lower energy when excited electrons return to the ground state.

Svedberg ($S$) numbers

Measurements that refer to protein ultracentrifugation.

Specific gravity factor for Immunoglobulins

The factor used to convert immunoglobulin values from $\text{mg/dL}$ to $\text{g/L}$ is $0.01$.

Primary standards

Standard solutions from which $99.95/$ of the chemical can be retrieved.

Beer's Law

A principle stating that optical density (absorbance) is directly proportional to the concentration ($A = \text{e} \times \text{b} \times \text{c}$).

Jaffe reaction

A reaction in which a red-orange chromogen is formed when creatinine reacts with picric acid.

Arithmetic mean

The sum of all the values in a set of numbers divided by the number of values in that set.

Accuracy

The closeness with which the measured value agrees with the true value.

Precision

The measure of the closeness or reproducibility of test measurements.

Specificity

The percentage of individuals without a specific disease who are correctly identified or predicted by the test as not having the disease.

Sensitivity

The ability of an analytical method to maintain accuracy and precision or the proportion of true positives correctly identified.

Standard precaution

A concept of bloodborne disease control that requires all human blood and potentially infectious materials to be treated as if known to be infectious.

Flash point

The temperature at which an adequate amount of vapor is produced to form an ignitable mixture with air at the liquid's surface.

Dwell time

The time between the initiation of a test and the completion of the analysis.

Westgard multirule $2_{2s}$

A quality control rule where two consecutive data points fall outside $+2s$ or fall outside $-2s$.

Arithmetic mean formula

The sum of values divided by the number of values ($n$).

Coefficient of variation ($CV$)

Represented as the standard deviation divided by the mean expressed as a percentage ($CV = (\frac{s}{\bar{x}}) \times 100$).

Tertiary structure

The three-dimensional spatial configuration of a single polypeptide chain determined by disulfide linkages, hydrogen bonds, and electrostatic attractions.

Albumin

The plasma protein mainly responsible for maintaining colloidal osmotic pressure in vivo.

Glucagon

The hyperglycemic factor produced by the pancreas.

Chylomicrons

Lipoproteins produced in the intestinal mucosa primarily responsible for carrying dietary (exogenous) lipids.

Osmolality

A measure of the concentration of a solution based on the number of dissolved particles.

Activation Energy

The energy needed for a reaction to occur; it is decreased by enzymes.

Zero-order kinetics

A state where the rate of the reaction is independent of the substrate concentration.

Saturated solution

A solution in which the molecules of solute in solution are in equilibrium with excess undissolved molecules.

RT-PCR

The nucleic acid technique in which RNA is converted to cDNA and then amplified.

Katal

The SI unit of measurement for enzyme activity.

Valinomycin

The antibiotic incorporated into the liquid ion exchange membrane used to quantitate potassium ($K^+$).

Bisalbuminemia

A congenital disorder characterized by a split in the albumin band when serum is subjected to electrophoresis.

Stray light

Any wavelength outside of the band transmitted by the monochromator in a spectrophotometer.

Severinghaus electrode

An electrode most commonly associated with the measurement of $pCO_2$.

Kober reaction

A reaction used in the assay of urinary estrogens.

Zimmerman reaction

An assay used for $17$-ketosteroids in which steroids react with m-dinitrobenzene in alcoholic $KOH$ to form a purple color.