Roche Chemstrip specific gravity

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Several of our clinic locations utilize the Roche Chemstrip for urine screening. Recently, a provider raised a concern that led to retesting a urine sample in the Urinalysis department. The specific gravity measured by the refractometer method was significantly higher than the value indicated by the Roche Chemstrip.
According to the Roche package insert, for urine samples with a high pH (as was the case here), the specific gravity reading may be adjusted to 1.005.
For those who also use Roche Chemstrips, how are you addressing situations where the actual specific gravity may be higher than what is visually indicated on the test strip when the urine has an elevated pH?

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Our system uses Siemens 10SG sticks for urinalysis testing so I can't speak directly to this issue. However, my first thought is to build an LIS comment that alerts providers that pH values may be falsely decreased in patients that have an elevated pH. To me this will be the easiest of solutions. 

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Laura Ball
6 months ago
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