ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Recent advances of hematology analyzers have improved performance of leukocyte differential counts and have reduced work load of clinical hematology laboratories. We evaluated CELL-DYN Sapphire (Abbott Diagnostics, Santa Clara, CA, USA) performance on leukocyte differential counts according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) document H20-A. METHODS: We evaluated imprecision (short term imprecision from duplication of 147 patients' sample and long term imprecision from three level commercial controls) and accuracy (n=462) of leukocyte differential counts of CELL-DYN Sapphire and compared with those of Sysmex XE-2100 (TOA Medical Electronics Co., Kobe, Japan), ADVIA 120 (Bayer Diagnostics, Tarrytown, NY, USA) and Beckman Coulter LH 750 (Beckman Coulter, Miami, FL, USA). RESULTS: The imprecision of CELL-DYN Sapphire for neutrophils and lymphocytes differentials was low with coefficients of variation (CV) from 1.4 to 6.2%, but the imprecision for basophils was high with CV from 34.7 to 79.6%. The correlation with manual count was good in samples without flags (n=314), with the exception of basophils (r: neutrophils, 0.921; lymphocytes, 0.921; monocytes, 0.653; eosinophils, 0.869; basophils 0.272). The correlation with other hematology analyzers was high except basophils (r: neutrophils, 0.969-0.986; lymphocytes, 0.986-0.990; monocytes, 0.787-0.887; eosinophils, 0.881-0.962; basophils 0.086-0.327). CONCLUSION: The performance on leukocyte differential counts of CELL-DYN Sapphire is comparable to Sysmex XE-2100, ADVIA 120 and Beckman Coulter LH 750. In regards of enumeration of basophils, the comparison with manual counts and other hematology analyzers shows poor agreement.