A Study of Analysis of Critical Values at Emergency Biochemistry Laboratory in a Tertiary Care Hospital in India.

ABSTRACT

One of the important functions of a clinical biochemistry laboratory is clear, accurate, and rapid communication of a critical value to clinicians1. Critical value reporting is one of the requirements for laboratory accreditation. This study aimed to analyse the critical values data at a tertiary care hospital in New Delhi, India in the emergency laboratory setting and compare it with the available data from previous studies.METHODSThis is a retrospective study of emergency biochemistry samples done over a period of two months from July 2019 to September 2019. The critical values data of several biochemical parameters generated from the testing of samples on Beckman Coulter Olympus AU 480 during three months period were analysed. Statistical analysis was conducted using Microsoft Excel 2016 program.RESULTS183056 tests were analysed, and 11875 critical alerts were generated the incidence of which varied from 0.8% for glucose (children) to 10.6% for serum potassium in children. Frequency of critical values for serum potassium is highest followed by serum sodium. Also, critical values for serum potassium in paediatric patients is higher than in adults. It can be stated that there is a need to study of frequency of critical values in emergency as well as routine laboratories to identify the parameters with maximum critical values and also recognize the underlying causes for the same and take suitable measures.CONCLUSIONSThe frequency of critical value for serum potassium, is highest followed by serum sodium, in case of samples received from adult patients. Also, frequency of critical values for serum potassium in paediatric patients is even higher than adults. These values show that these critical biochemical values can be detrimental to these patients and timely notification to the clinician is very important so that necessary actions could be taken to correct them. Further studies of critical values in emergency labs is required to observe trends and identify the underlying causes and suggest suitable remedial measures if any.