Abstract
Background: Monthly medians of patient results are useful in assessment of analytical quality in medical laboratories. Separate medians by gender makes it possible to generate two independent estimates of contemporaneous errors. However, for plasma creatinine, reference intervals (RIs) are different by gender and also higher over 70 years of age.
Methods: Daily, weekly and monthly patient medians were calculated from the raw data of plasma creatinine concentrations for males between 18 and 70 years, males >70 years, females between 18 and 70 years and females >70 years.
Results: The medians of the four groups were all closely associated, with similar patterns. The mean of percentage bias from each group defined the best estimate of bias. The maximum half-range (%) of the bias evaluations provided an estimate of the uncertainty comparable to the analytical performance specifications: thus, bias estimates could be classified as optimum, desirable or minimum quality.
Conclusions: Medians by gender and age are useful in assessment of analytical stability for plasma creatinine concentration ranging from 60 to 90 μmol/L. The daily medians are valuable in rapid detection of large systematic errors, the weekly medians in detecting minor systematic errors and monthly medians in assessment of long-term analytical stability.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 5 Aug 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Dec 2019 |
Keywords
- analytical stability
- medians of plasma creatinine
- partitioning by gender and age
- percentage bias
- raw data for plasma creatinine
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Biochemistry
- Biochemistry, medical