Gem 5000 cartridge issues

I have 18 GEMs at my facility and have had a couple of paks kick off for similar reasons over this past weekend as well. I assign blame for PCS solution errors on the shipping process, and I had one pO2 failure and then another one that didn't even give me an error, just kicked off which Werfen is looking into. We did have a "bad" batch of cartridges at one point over the summer, and that may be the case here as well. In my experience, with zero scientific evidence to back it up, is that they do go in streaks where there will be a couple of issues and then all is well for a while. But no, I would not be alarmed unless it was consistently the same issue, like lactate going out on multiple paks which could indicate something is wrong with the device. 

I would agree with what Cory said above - we have some time frames with many cartridge failures and then none for awhile.  We have not been able to pinpoint why this occurs. We have 12 GEM5000s.  I will say we do see pO2 issues more so than others and we have had that leakage problem as well. Good to know it's not just us! 

Today I received a notice from Werfen about "process contol solution not detected" problems on several lots.  One was on my instrument and in our inventory.  Keep an eye out for the email.

Thanks Lori! I will contact my rep and see if she can forward it to us.