What Is Lipemic Specimen

Lipemic samples are patient specimens that have a higher fat content in them, so their blood is a little more milky, thicker. Whereas, usually when you spin down whole blood, it will look like this. It has yellow, clear serum or plasma on top of the red cells. This is plasma here on top of the red blood cells.

What causes a lipemic specimen?

The most common cause of lipemia is that the patient is not fasting and has eaten close in time to the blood draw. This effect is most dramatic when the patient has consumed a meal with high fat content. However, nonfasting on its own usually does not result in enough lipemia to significantly impact laboratory tests.

What does lipemia affect?

Conclusion: Lipemia causes clinically significant interferences for phosphorus, creatinine, total protein and calcium measurement and those interferences could be effectively removed by ultracentrifugation.