Use of routine clinical laboratory data to define reference intervals

Laboratory Reference Intervals in Africa

Clinical use of conventional reference intervals in the frail elderly.

RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES Reference intervals provided by the laboratory are commonly established by measuring samples from apparently healthy subjects in the ages 18-65 years, excluding elderly individuals with chronic diseases and medication. The aim of our study was to establish whether current reference intervals for immune parameters and chemical biomarkers are valid for older individ...

eJIFCC Special Issue on Laboratory Reference Intervals

Recent decades have witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of new diagnostic methods and the introduction of many emerging new biomarkers in clinical diagnostic laboratories. The utility of biomarkers as screening and diagnostic tools is limited by many factors, such as sensitivity, specificity and predictive values. Another critical factor, not always carefully considered, is the availa...

Prerequisites for use of common reference intervals.

The theory of reference values was developed more than 30 years ago, but its application in most clinical laboratories is still incomplete today. This is for several reasons, the most relevant ones being the lack of standardisation of the analytical methods, resulting in method-dependent values, and the difficulty in recruiting the proper number of reference subjects for establishment of refere...

Secondary Use of Laboratory data: Potentialities and Limitations

Clinical databases have been developed in recent years especially during the course of all medical concerns including laboratory results. The information produced by the diagnostic laboratories have great impact on health care system with various secondary uses. These uses are sometimes as publishing new extracted information of laboratory reports which have been widely applied in the scientifi...