Evaluation of the Coulter S-Plus V three-part differential in a community hospital, including criteria for its use.
The Coulter S-Plus V three-part differential was evaluated for its precision, correlation with 100-cell manual differentials, ability to process routine specimens without flagging, and ability to detect abnormalities as defined by manual differential. The instrument's precision is markedly greater than that of manual methods, especially in the mononuclear category. Correlation with manual differential lymphocyte, mononuclear, and granulocyte percentages was 0.91, 0.54, and 0.94, respectively. Eighty-four percent of routine samples could be processed by the instrument without further review. With the use of a combination of S-Plus V-generated flags and preset laboratory criteria, only 9% of abnormal manual differentials would have been undetected. Three-fourths of these undetected cases involved low-frequency abnormalities of questionable clinical significance. The three-part differential should be able to decrease the number of manual differentials that are performed, which would result in a cost savings to the laboratory.
D002452:Cell Count / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003151:Community Health Centers; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans