Indirect determination of pediatric blood count reference intervals
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Abstract
Background: Determination of pediatric reference intervals (RIs) for laboratory quantities, including hematological quantities, is complex. The measured quantities vary by age, and obtaining samples from healthy children is difficult. Many widely used RIs are derived from small sample numbers and are split into arbitrary discrete age intervals. Use of intra-laboratory RIs specific to the examined population and analytical device used is not yet fully established. Indirect methods address these issues by deriving RIs from clinical laboratory databases which contain large datasets of both healthy and pathological samples.
Methods: A refined indirect approach was used to create continuous age-dependent RIs for blood count quantities and sodium from birth to adulthood. The dataset for each quantity consisted of 60,000 individual samples from our clinical laboratory. Patient samples were separated according to age, and a density function of the proportion of healthy samples was estimated for each age group. The resulting RIs were merged to obtain continuous RIs from birth to adulthood.
Results: The obtained RIs were compared to RIs generated by identical laboratory instruments, and to population-specific RIs created using conventional methods. This comparison showed a high concordance of reference limits and their age-dependent dynamics.
Conclusions: The indirect approach reported here is well-suited to create continuous, intra-laboratory RIs from clinical laboratory databases and showed that the RIs generated are comparable to those created using established methods. The procedure can be transferred to other laboratory quantities and can be used as an alternative method for RI determination where conventional approaches are limited.
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©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Missing agreement between the two IMMULITE® PSA assays
- “Cerebrovascular stressing”: dipyridamole-induced S100B elevation predicts ischemic cerebrovascular events
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- Adrenocorticotropic hormone stability in preanalytical phase depends on temperature and proteolytic enzyme inhibitor
- The impact on costs and efficiency of reducing the number of collected tubes
- Improved software on the Sysmex XE-5000 BF mode for counting leukocytes in cerebrospinal fluid
- First trimester placental growth factor and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 are significantly related to PAPP-A levels
- Preliminary evaluation of complete blood cell count on Mindray BC-6800
- Rational use of laboratory tests: albuminuria
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- Personalized (laboratory) medicine: a bridge to the future
- PSA, PCA3 and the phi losophy of prostate cancer management
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- Evaluation of [−2] proPSA and Prostate Health Index (phi) for the detection of prostate cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis
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- Opinion Papers
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- Time for a conceptual shift in assessment of internal quality control for whole blood or cell-based testing systems? An evaluation using platelet function and the PFA-100 as a case example
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- A position paper of the EFLM Committee on Education and Training and Working Group on Distance Education Programmes/E-Learning: developing an e-learning platform for the education of stakeholders in laboratory medicine
- General Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
- A novel weighted cumulative delta-check method for highly sensitive detection of specimen mix-up in the clinical laboratory
- Identification and quantification of hemoglobins in whole blood: the analytical and organizational aspects of Capillarys 2 Flex Piercing compared with agarose electrophoresis and HPLC methods
- Determination of the fatty acid profile of neutral lipids, free fatty acids and phospholipids in human plasma
- Urinary iodine concentrations of pregnant women in Ukraine
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- Faecal calprotectin: comparative study of the Quantum Blue rapid test and an established ELISA method
- Target analyte quantification by isotope dilution LC-MS/MS directly referring to internal standard concentrations – validation for serum cortisol measurement
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- Reference values and upper reference limits for 26 trace elements in the urine of adults living in Belgium
- Biological variation and reference change values of common clinical chemistry and haematologic laboratory analytes in the elderly population
- Indirect determination of pediatric blood count reference intervals
- Cancer Diagnostics
- Suitability of quality control materials for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) measurement: inter-method variability of common tumor marker control materials
- Prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) RNA detection in blood and tissue samples for prostate cancer diagnosis
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