Quality assessment in clinical chemistry: a Thailand experience.

A Thailand quality assessment program called "The External Quality Assessment in Clinical Chemistry, EQAC" was found in 1986. Ablind lyophilized control serum is monthly-cycle distributed to the participants and the returned test-report values are evaluated by a computed program. Evaluated report Variance Index Scores (VIS) and grades of test and mean score of all tests are posted back to the participants including a back of "The Newsletter of the EQAC". The development has been indicated by an increasing number of active participants and an improvement due to decreasing Variance Index Scores. In 1998 the program was applied by 324 laboratory participants of which 59% of general hospital and community health hospital laboratory, 29% of private hospital laboratory including polyclinics, and 12% of the others. By now as many as 144 trials of 23 biochemistry tests at different methods were assessed from the EQAC program. Participant communication, knowledge update and enhanced quality encouragement have been managed by mean of participants' VIS from 120 to 93 during 1987-1998.

Serum and urinary uric acid levels in healthy subjects and in patients with urolithiasis.

Serum uric acid and 24-hour urine uric acid levels were determined in 47 patients with urolithiasis and in 177 healthy volunteers. The normal volunteers had serum and urinary uric acid levels of 6.0-6.4 mg/dl, 619.4-683.7 mg/day for males and 4.6-4.8 mg/dl, 531.5-589.6 mg/day for females. Uric acid levels in both serum and urine were higher in male volunteers than in female volunteers (p less than 0.05), whereas, among patients the ranges of serum and urinary uric acid levels were not significantly different between males and females (p greater than 0.05). However, the normal distribution of the determined small experimental data, was statistically different and is obviously reliable. Patients with urolithiasis showed significantly higher levels of serum uric acid (8.0 +/- 0.3 mg/dl) than healthy volunteers (5.5 +/- 0.1 mg/dl) (p less than 0.05), but showed no difference in urinary uric acid levels compared with healthy volunteers (p greater than 0.05). The highest number of urolithiasis in both male and female patients fell within the same age range of 41-50 years. The 24-hour urine pH of healthy volunteers showed a range of 5.1-7.0 while the patients with urolithiasis had a pH range of 4.6-7.0. It was also found that 33 per cent of patients had urine pH less than 5.0.