Abstract
Context. - Harmonization and standardization of results among different clinical laboratories is necessary for clinical practice guidelines to be established. Objective. - To evaluate the state of the art in measuring 10 routine chemistry analytes. Design. - A specimen prepared as off-the-clot pooled sera and 4 conventionally prepared specimens were sent to participants in the College of American Pathologists Chemistry Survey. Analyte concentrations were assigned by reference measurement procedures. Participants. - Approximately 6000 clinical laboratories. Results. - For glucose, iron, potassium, and uric acid, more than 87.5% of peer groups meet the desirable bias goals based on biologic variability criteria. The remaining 6 analytes had less than 52% of peer groups that met the desirable bias criteria. Conclusions. - Routine measurement procedures for some analytes had acceptable traceability to reference systems. Conventionally prepared proficiency testing specimens were not adequately commutable with a fresh frozen specimen to be used to evaluate trueness of methods compared with a reference measurement procedure.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 838-846 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine |
Volume | 132 |
Issue number | 5 |
State | Published - May 1 2008 |