Speaker:
Kelly Doyle, PhD, D(ABCC), FAACC. University of Utah School of Medicine, Department of Pathology and ARUP Laboratories, Salt Lake City, UT
Dr Doyle is a board‐certified clinical chemist and is an Associate Professor of pathology at the University of Utah. He is associate Director of the Clinical Chemistry Fellowship program and serves as the Medical Director of Special Chemistry and Endocrinology at ARUP Laboratories. He has a special interest in laboratory science education, the application of mass spectroscopy, and quality management.
Overview:
The aim of this presentation is to describe the application of modernized indirect reference interval approaches, based on ready to use R packages refineR and TMC. Reference intervals are an integral component for result interpretation and are a regulatory requirement of laboratory medicine practice. Establishing RIs using the traditional approach by direct sampling is complicated by insufficient access to patients within varying interval partitions (e.g., pediatrics), and adoption or transferring of RIs is hindered by lack of assay standardization and unique population demographics. However, indirect sampling techniques using laboratory database results have significant practical advantages compared to direct sampling methods. The use of stored patient data can offer a faster and less costly means to developing RIs.
Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
- Summarize the establishment and use of reference intervals in clinical laboratory practice.
- Discuss the application of direct and indirect methods to determine population/sex/age based reference intervals.
- Describe the use of indirect methods refineR and TMC in estimating reference intervals from stored results.