'Hamburglar's Sign'

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This is a serious question, but probably has a stupid answer. The 'Everyone' forums scare me, and anyway this place has a good-sized population of past and present EMS people, plus we who work in ED's see a lot of fresh blood in vials.

Urban legend or reality?

It's been said, by someone who knows someone "who used to be an EMT," that you can tell which patients have been to McDonald's in the last couple hours, because the fat makes their blood "congeal" in the tube.

Sounds like BS to me, and I've certainly never seen it, but I don't work with much blood. And it's so amusing I sort of wish it were true. Anyone care to weigh in?

 

[walpk]

During our lipids lectures in biochemistry class, we were shown a slide with two test tubes of plasma, one drawn about 30 minutes after a high-fat meal, and one drawn a couple hours later, and the earlier sample is definitely more opaque due to all the lipid particles floating around. It's not congealed at all, just opaque and milky looking. Totally gross.

"Hamburglar's Sign"? I love that!

 

[12R34Y]

I've seen the same thing as the previous poster.......there can be a difference in the look of blood in a tube. had a guy with hypercholesterolemia and it was definately different that normal.

later

 

[Primate]

Had a pt with triglycerides of ~6800, total chol. of ~900. Blood looked just like strawberry Quick. An intern taped a vial to the dry wipe board for about a week.

Oh you can't . . . Drink it slow . . . if it's Quick. . . . .

 

[ckent]

Actually, this is one issue that a preventative cardiologist at my school researches. He believes that the transient rise in triglycerides seen after consuming a fatty meal is clinically significant and should be treated as clinically significant (ie more aggressive triglyceride lowering therapy). Some of his research studies have looked at things like endothelian function after having research subjects consumed a milk shake. I don't know if there has been any studies that have suggested that more people have heart attacks after consuming a fatty meal, but I don't think that it's that far fetched to imagine. If you have transient rises in your triglycerides during the daytime with meals, you may be more susceptible to just clotting off an artery one of those times.

 

[Idiopathic]

Just visually checking the turbidity of a serum sample after a non-fasting draw is enough to prove to me that it aint good. As far as hypercholesterolemia, the serum will actually be clear in type II. In Type V, you should see junk whenever you do a draw. Remember cholesterol does not give a turbid sample.