The instability of commercial control materials in quality control of mean corpuscular volume.
BACKGROUND
Mean corpuscular volume (MCV) of stabilized whole blood used for quality control (QC) of hematology analyzers exhibits a tendency to increase during storage. The aim of this study is to evaluate the extent of biases over time with 3 most widely used control materials and to map out a strategy to overcome the data shift of MCV on daily QC practice.


METHODS
QC results of TESTPoint tested by ADVIA 2120i, e-CHEK tested by XE 2100, and 6C Cell Control tested by DxH 800 were analyzed.


RESULTS
MCV of all control materials showed a tendency to increase over time. By the fifth week, most of the materials showed biases larger than one standard deviation, with some exceeding a bias of four standard deviations.


CONCLUSIONS
Laboratories should apply appropriate QC strategies in MCV tests by considering their individual quality and efficiency requirements.
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 250 Seongsanno, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: elanor06@hotmail.com.
Sue Jung
SJ
Kim
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 250 Seongsanno, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea.
Eun Young
EY
Lee
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 250 Seongsanno, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea.
Yea Jin
YJ
Song
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 250 Seongsanno, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: labdx@yuhs.ac.
Jaewoo
J
Song
D001331:Automation; D001793:Blood Preservation; D004909:Erythrocyte Indices; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006801:Humans; D011786:Quality Control; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013048:Specimen Handling
Automated hematology analyzer; Erythrocyte indices; Mean corpuscular volume; Quality control; Stabilized blood