validity of the reflotron as a screening tool for blood cholesterol

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of Reflotron analyzer in screening for blood cholesterol in terms of its precision and accuracy. The results obtained by Reflotron were compared with those obtained by a standard hospital laboratory procedure for the same samples. An optimal precision that met the 1992 LSP standards for precision was observed. On the other hand, a suboptimal accuracy of Reflotron was detected. Using the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, the optimum cut-off points giving the best validity values for the test were 170 mg/dl and 190 mg/dl [4.4 mmol/L and 4.9 mmol/L] for the border line and true hypercholesterolemia, respectively. At these levels, sensitivity was 0.89 and 0.86, specificity was 0.93 and 0.93 and the positive predictive value was 0.91 and 0.82, respectively