Quality assurance of clinical biochemistry testing:a mualti-center study based reference interval for clinical chemistry tests in the Chinese population / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To verify and monitor the performance of accuracy, precision and comparability of 26 clinical biochemical analytes (29 methods) in the six centers involved in multi-centers reference intervals research, and to ensure the reliability of theirmeasurement results.Methods During the period of the systems evaluating, two levels of commercial quality control materials and fresh frozen human serum reference materials were applied to verify the performance of inter-laboratory precision and accuracy of analysis systems. During the period of samples testing, the commercial quality control materials were measured whenever samples were analysed, the fresh frozen serum reference materials were measured once a month.The coefficient of variations (CVs), bias and total errors were calculated to assess the precision, accuracy and comparability.Results Verification of precision and accuracy ( 1 ) the ranges of CVs of 29 methods in the six laboratory laboratories were 0.4%-6.0%, the CVs of all 29 methods met the criterion . (2) The overall average bias of the analysis systems of 21 analytes (24 methods) ranged from -5.15%( ALT) to 4.46% ( Ur ) .Among 24 methods the overall average bias of TP, Glu-GOD, Ur, Cl, Ca exceeded the acceptable range.The quality assessment during the period of samples testing(1) The overall average bias ranged from -1.95%(Ca) to 2.92%(Ur), median 1.26%, they all met the requirements of relevant standards.( 2 ) When commercial control materials were tested, the requirements of CVs were fulfilled for most methods in the six laboratories,and the CVs of TP, Alb, Cl, Ca exceeded the acceptable range.The overall average TE of all methods met the quality specification for the C-N controls material.For the C-P control material, only the overall average TE of TP (5.05%) exceeded thearceptable range while the other methods met the requirement in criterion.Conclusions The performance of precision and accuracy of the analysis systems used in the six laboratories passed the verification.During the period of sample testing, the performance of precision and accuracy of the most methods in the 6 laboratories met the requirements of quality specifications, and the overall performance was good.Because of the limitation of current technology the performance of some methods didn't fulfill the requirement of specifications, and need to be improved.