Distribution of haemoglobin in patients presenting to their general practitioner, and its correlation with serum ferritin.

We have conducted a survey in the United Kingdom in order to evaluate the prevalence of anaemia and of iron deficiency in elderly male and female patients and in female patients of child-bearing age presenting to their general practitioner. Although haemoglobin values were approximately normally distributed, there was evidence of a bimodal distribution of serum ferritin values, particularly in elderly men. A correlation between serum ferritin and haemoglobin values was found to exist, both in the elderly and in younger women. The overall prevalence of anaemia in the study population was 14.3%, although it was higher for elderly men (20.1%) than either elderly women (13.7%) or women of child-bearing age (11.9%). Iron deficiency associated with anaemia was more common in elderly men (45.2% of those anaemic) than elderly women (28.6%) or women of child-bearing age (25.6%). This survey indicates that the prevalence of anaemia among certain groups of high risk patients presenting for consultation to their general practitioner is about 1 in 7, although the prevalence is as high as 1 in 5 in elderly men.

Standardizing clinical laboratory data for the development of transferable computer-based diagnostic programs.

The existence of systematic differences between test results obtained at different laboratories can compromise the development of generally accessible reference databases for interpretive pathology. We review approaches to the elimination of inter-laboratory bias from pathology test results through the use of standard unit transformations. A general transform procedure is described that will permit laboratories serving a common population to make use of reference data, decision rules, and computer-based interpretive programs developed around a larger clinical database than each of these test centers could amass for themselves.