Pediatric Lipid Testing

The Piccolo Xpress would be a great option. They have a Lipid Panel test that is CLIA Waived w/ results in 12 mins and very easy to Interface!

Hi Erika :)
We use the Cholestech from Abbott in our clinics.  It is not interfaceable but we use our Nova MTE to have the staff enter the results.  We have been using them since 2024, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Abbott Cholestech LDX, preparing to interface through RALS, capillary collections are pediatric friendly - well, not from the child's perspective

Karla, are you guys doing a direct interface from the Cholestech?  I didn't think it was possible since you can't enter any information into the instrument.  If you do, please share how. :)

Erika - I'm curious about the incentive for this with pediatric providers.  Is this part of a childhood obesity prevention initiative?  Will 5 year olds be taking statins for life? 😲

We are evaluating cholestech and Cardiochek now for our pediatric clinics. Both are CLIA-waived, there is an age limit for Cholestech, the patient has to be older than 2.  There are a few recommendations from the expert panel from National heart, lung, and blood institute, and other ped's hospitals are doing so already.

Here is the link to the article, peds_guidelines_full.pdf.
Universal Cholesterol Screening Referral Guidelines | Children's National Hospital

Adonica, actually, it's not really my project, I just know the community in our system is preparing to kick off with RALS.  It is on the RALS test menu as one of the instruments they interface but out of curiosity, i am looking into it to see how it works.

Our diabetes clinic is also looking into this as well. We’ve evaluated Cholestech, but the inability to enter patient info directly is a compliance concern for us and it cannot be interfaced to TELCOR. We also looked at CardioChek, though our Medical Director has some reservations. Both Cholestech and CardioChek use the Friedewald equation to calculate LDL-C from TC, HDL, and TG. This method is a bit outdated and has known limitations—TG >400 requires result suppression, it often requires fasting (which is challenging for general screening), and there are concerns about bias in TC and TG compared to central lab results.

Just a word of caution, when you look at the different POCT methods of Lipid testing be sure to ask the manufacturer if they have had any recent back orders for cassettes or QC or how often they have backorders.  We have had 2 back orders of QC with the Cholestech previously and currently dealing with another QC backorder,  will probably have to suspend testing until QC becomes available.