title: [Evaluation of the analyzer of hematology Beckman Coulter® HmX™ in the university hospital of Oran].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The choice of an automaton of haematology is a determining stage, which has to take into account at the same time the quality of the results and the economic imperatives: workload, structure and organization of the laboratory.
  
  
  METHODS
  [corrected] It is in this spirit that we estimated during a period of 3 months the analyzer of haematology: the HmX™ Coulter with boatman of samples of the company Beckman. This automaton realizes the blood numeration, the formula leukocytic and the reticulocyte count. At first, we estimated the appropriate characteristics of device. Secondly, we estimated the relevance, the sensibility and the specificity of the alarms by comparing with the reference method, which is the optical microscopy. For that purpose, 125 blood smears resulting from service of haematology and from resuscitation were examined in optical microscopy. The technical tests were realized according to the recommendations of the International committee for evaluation of automatons of haematology.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The analytical performances were satisfactory in particular the big interval of linearity and the absence of contamination. As regards the evaluation of the alarms system: rate of rejection is 63%, the sensibility 86%, the specificity 70%, the positive predictive value 80%, the negative predictive value 78% and the efficiency 80%. The alarms myelaemia and atypical lymphocytes were never sources of false negatives. The alarms erythroblasts and platelet aggregates did not engendered positive forgery. The blast cell alarm was responsible for a single case of false negative.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The faithfulness of automaton is satisfactory: the absence of contamination, the big interval of linearity for the leukocytes, the red blood cells and the platelets as well as a good relevance of the alarms with regard to the anomalies found on the peripheral blood smear. From the user-friendliness and practicability point of view, the HmX™ Coulter was deeply appreciated.
authors.affiliation: Service d'hémobiologie, centre hospitalo-universitaire d'Oran, rue de Benzerdjeb, 31000 Oran, Algérie. Electronic address: noudjoum@yahoo.fr.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zmouli
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moulasserdoun
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Seghier
mesh_terms: D001331:Automation; D001772:Blood Cell Count / Q000295:instrumentation*; D056902:Clinical Alarms; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006403:Hematologic Tests; D006405:Hematology / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards; D006785:Hospitals, University; D006801:Humans; D008853:Microscopy; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Alarm; Alarme; Blood formula; Evaluation; Formule sanguine; Hemogram; HmX™ Coulter; Hémogramme; Évaluation