Its a question you hear a lot in the emergency department: does using an alcohol wipe to clean the skin prior to taking a blood alcohol specimen affect the reading?

We have mandatory police blood alcohol collection for adults in control of a vehicle (or animal) involved in an accident in a public place, or pedestrians hit by a vehicle , and our policy is to use a iodine swab to clean the area before drawing blood so as not to give a false positive reading. But is this evidence based?

What if you inadvertently use an isopropyl swab prior to drawing multiple blood specimens such as in a multi-trauma?
Well, a study was conducted in 2007, in the emergency department at Tamworth Hospital on 56 volunteers by Alicia Tucker and Christopher Trethewy.

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