Consistency Analysis of the UF-1500 and UF-5000 Automated Urine Particle Analyzers.

BACKGROUND: The aim was to evaluate the consistency of the results between the UF-1500 and UF-5000, fully automated urine particle analyzers. METHODS: A total of 554 randomly selected inpatient and outpatient urine samples were collected for analysis using the UF-1500, the UF-5000, and by manual microscopic examination. The coincidence rate, intraday repeatability, and interday reproducibility were evaluated on the UF-1500 and UF-5000. To analyze the review flags from the UF-1500, the UF-1500 results were compared to manual microscopy as the gold standard. RESULTS: The repeatability of red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), epithelial cells (ECs), casts, and bacteria using the UF-1500 and UF-5000 is expressed as the relative standard deviations of the intraday and inter-day measurements. For the UF-1500, the relative standard deviation values ranged from 5.9% to 12.6% and 4.9% to 17.2% for the low and 1.6% to 9.3% and 2.3% to 16.9% for the high samples, respectively. The correlation co-efficient for RBCs, WBCs, ECs, SECs, casts, crystals, and bacteria for the UF-1500 were 0.981, 0.993, 0.968, 0.963, 0.821, 0.783, and 0.992, respectively. Review samples from the UF-1500 were confirmed by microscopic examination. Review flags for all 554 samples included 3 samples with "DEBRIS High" and 23 samples with "RBCs/YLC Abnormal classification". CONCLUSIONS: The identification of various urine components by both instruments meets laboratory requirements. These two instruments with different performances have specific characteristics and should be used based upon the needs of each laboratory.

Evaluation of red blood cell parameters provided by the UF-5000 urine auto-analyzer in patients with glomerulonephritis.

OBJECTIVES: The microscopic examination of hematuria, a cardinal symptom of glomerulonephritis (GN), is time-consuming and labor-intensive. As an alternative, the fully automated urine particle analyzer UF-5000 can interpret the morphological information of the glomerular red blood cells (RBCs) using parameters such as UF-5000 small RBCs (UF-%sRBCs) and Lysed-RBCs. METHODS: Hematuria samples from 203 patients were analyzed using the UF-5000 and blood and urine chemistries to determine the cut-off values of RBC parameters for GN and non-glomerulonephritis (NGN) classification and confirm their sensitivity to the IgA nephropathy and non-IgA nephropathy groups. RESULTS: The UF-%sRBCs and Lysed-RBCs values differed significantly between the GN and NGN groups. The cut-off value of UF-%sRBCs was >56.8% (area under the curve, 0.649; sensitivity, 94.1%; specificity, 38.1%; positive predictive value, 68.3%; and negative predictive value, 82.1%), while that for Lysed-RBC was >4.6/µL (area under the curve, 0.708; sensitivity, 82.4%; specificity, 56.0%; positive predictive value, 72.6%; and negative predictive value, 69.1%). Moreover, there was no significant difference in the sensitivity between the IgA nephropathy and non-IgA nephropathy groups (87.1 and 89.8% for UF-%sRBCs and 83.9 and 78.4% for Lysed-RBCs, respectively). In the NGN group, the cut-off values showed low sensitivity (56.0% for UF-%sRBCs and 44.0% for Lysed-RBCs). CONCLUSIONS: The RBC parameters of the UF-5000, specifically UF-%sRBCs and Lysed-RBCs, showed good cut-off values for the diagnosis of GN.

[The problems associated with home care in pharmacy].

In the revision of prescribed medicinal compensation act of April 2008, it is possible for health insurance pharmacy to allocate an injection medicine and to add a medical treatment material. In addition to that, the newly established fees like "Joint guidance fee when patient is discharged from hospital", "Joint guidance fee such as an urgent home care of patients", and "Medical management guidance fee for homecare patient emergency visit", and so on, would strengthen in the home medical care. Therefore, we expect that more health insurance pharmacies will have an opportunity to participate in the home medical care business. On the other hand, there are problems associated with specific operational home medical care that are invisible from the system. We herein report the problems associated with "Home Visiting Medicinal Management Guidelines," that was performed in the last 6 months, mainly centered on home delivery expenses.