Vesna Supak Smolcic

Klinički bolnički centar Rijeka | KBCR · Department of Laboratory Diagnostics

In the initial diagnostics of arterial hypertension (AH) laboratory medicine is a cornerstone, along with a blood pressure (BP) measurement and an electrocardiogram. It mainly refers to routine blood and urine tests for diagnosis and monitoring primary hypertension and its associated conditions such as asymptomatic hypertension-mediated organ damag...

Objectives The aim was to evaluate the stability of serum bicarbonate at room temperature, depending on time to centrifugation and air exposure. Methods Stability study was conducted in the laboratory of Clinical Hospital Centre Rijeka, Croatia in January-February 2022. Nine samples from 10 volunteers were collected in clot activator gel tubes (Gr...

Informed consent is a process in which a human subject who is to participate in research needs to give his or her consent after being properly informed of the expected benefits as well as the potential harm of the research that will be performed. The function and purpose of the research ethics committee is to ensure that the research that will take...

Introduction: The aim of our study was to perform verification of serum indices measurement on three clinical chemistry platforms. Materials and methods: This study was done on three analyzers: Abbott Architect c8000, Beckman Coulter AU5800 (BC) and Roche Cobas 6000 c501. Following analytical specifications were verified: precision (two patient sam...

Studies with positive results are greatly more represented in literature than studies with negative results, producing so-called publication bias. This review aims to discuss occurring problems around negative results and to emphasize the importance of reporting negative results. Underreporting of negative results introduces bias into meta-analysis...

Introduction Our aim was to investigate if: (a) authors of Biochemia Medica meet authorship criteria given by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), (b) authorship violations are more frequent in submissions containing some type of scientific misconduct. Materials and methods Self-reported authorship contributions regarding th...

Recent findings of authorship criteria violations in the manuscripts submitted to Biochemia Medica show that almost 40% of authors do not meet necessary criteria for authorship and thus indicate the need for better dissemination of editorial policy on authorship in our journal. We believe that such cases are mostly due to the authors’ unawareness o...

Background: Endogenous interferences are an important source of biased laboratory results. Hemolysis, lipemia and icteria are the main source of endogenous interference in laboratory medicine. Accreditation according to ISO 15189 improves the overall quality of the laboratory procedures. The aim of our study was i) to assess the level of knowledge...

Introduction: The aim of this study was to perform the validation of coagulation systems STA Compact Max and STA-R Evolution (Diagnostica Stago, France) with emphasis on method performance for routine and special coagulation analyses and to compare them with routine coagulation systems. Materials and Methods: Validation was performed at the same ti...

Instructions for authors (IFA) need to be informative and regularly updated. We hypothesized that journals with a higher impact factor (IF) have more comprehensive IFA. The aim of the study was to examine whether IFA of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports 2013, "Medical Laboratory Technology" category, are written in accordance with th...

Objectives: Despite the standardization of the phlebotomy procedure, blood analysis is occasionally requested after recommended hours with the excuse that the patient is still fasting. We aimed to examine the influence of prolonged fasting and mild physical activity on routine laboratory tests. Design and methods: The study was conducted on 30 v...

Peer review is widely used system for evaluating manuscripts prior to publication. It has been and still is widely used tool for making justified and fair editorial decision. However, the evidence of its efficacy is limited and it has been criticized to be time-consuming, biased, inconsistent, conservative, and open to abuse. As a result, researche...

Salami publication or segmented publication is a distinct form of redundant publication which is usually characterized by similarity of hypothesis, methodology or results but not text similarity. These aspects of publications are not objectively detected by software applications and therefore present a serious threat to publication ethics. This art...

Phlebotomy is one of the most complex medical procedures in the diagnosis, management and treatment of patients in healthcare. Since laboratory test results are the basis for a large proportion (60-80%) of medical decisions, any error in the phlebotomy process could have serious consequences. In order to minimize the possibility of errors, phleboto...

In February 2013, Biodhemia Medica has joined CrossRef, which enabled us to implement CrossCheck plagiarism detection service. Therefore, all manuscript submitted to Biodchemia Medica are now first assigned to Research integrity editor (RIE), before sending the manuscript for peer-review. RIE submits the text to CrossCheck analysis and is responsib...

Self-plagiarism is a controversial issue in scientific writing and presentation of research data. Unlike plagiarism, self-plagiarism is difficult to interpret as intellectual theft under the justification that one cannot steal from oneself. However, academics are concerned, as self-plagiarized papers mislead readers, do not contribute to science, a...

Plagiarism remains at the top in terms of interest to the scientific community. In its many vicious forms, patchwork plagiarism is characterized by numerous unresolved issues and often passes "below the radar" of editors and reviewers. The problem of detecting the complexity of misconduct has been partially resolved by plagiarism detection software...

Salami publication or segmented publication is a distinct form of redundant publication which is usually characterized by similarity of hypothesis, methodology or results but not text similarity. These aspects of publications are not objectively detected by software applications and therefore present a serious threat to publication ethics. This art...

Cobas 6000 (Roche, Germany) is biochemistry analyzer for spectrophotometric, immunoturbidimetric and ion-selective determination of biochemical analytes. Hereby we present analytical validation with emphasis on method performance judgment for routine operation. Validation was made for 30 analytes (metabolites, enzymes, trace elements, specific prot...

This cross-sectional multicentric survey study aimed to assess the quality of the extra-analytical phase of laboratory activities in some developing European countries and Mexico. We assessed the quality of the extra-analytical practices in participating laboratories regarding the: a) sample acceptance criteria; b) phlebotomy procedures; c) test re...

Introduction: Extra-analytical phase is the source of most of the errors in laboratory practice. A cross-sectional survey study was performed among members of Croatian Chamber of Medical Biochemists (CCMB) aimed to investigate the status of extra-analytical phase in Croatia. Materials and methods: Results were collected from members of CCMB (N = 53...

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, also called Osler-Rendu-Weber disease, is a systemic autosomally dominant inherited disease which affects most small blood vessels of the skin and mucosa. Abnormal communication between arteries and veins is also present in visceral organs. This rare condition is often not duly recognized and, because of its n...

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, also called Osler-Rendu-Weber disease, is a systemic autosomally dominant inherited disease which affects most small blood vessels of the skin and mucosa. Abnormal communication between arteries and veins is also present in visceral organs. This rare condition is often not duly recognized and, because of its n...