As someone working in this field particularly on the product front and academic front - a major concern I have with this study is the lack of work done to estab

As someone working in this field particularly on the product front and academic front - a major concern I have with this study is the lack of work done to establish what the clinical significance is in these variations. The methodology is well controlled enough to indicate that a statistically significant difference does indeed exist in the variations on the drop-to-drop level between venous and capillary samples, but what's missing is a detailed analysis of whether or not these differences would result in clinically different outcomes - from my work, the range of identifying an anemic, leukocyte spikes, etc. is large enough that the spikes in deviations in capillary samples ultimately become inconsequential. Furthermore dozens of studies [1,2,3 are just a few examples] in the past have found essentially the opposite outcome. A discussion is necessary - but suggesting that all drop based diagnostics will forever be inaccurate is both unbased and dangerous given the growing importance of this field. If anyone has specific questions feel free to drop me a line at ttandon[at]stanford[dot]edu [1]http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/508649/ http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/508649/ [2]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23294266 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23294266 [3]http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0043702 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....