Reducing the effects of control materials based on interchangeability of estimates of day‐to‐day imprecision between commercial control materials and serum samples

Abstract

When a clinical laboratory tests serum samples, it usually only conducts a single test and sends out a report. Therefore, it is important to control the imprecision of assays. 1,2 Estimations of day-to-day imprecision are usually made with control materials. In practice, however, the detection of a significant change between two consecutive results of an analyte in a patient requires knowledge of the day-to-day imprecision associated with patient results. 1 The imprecision of patient results generally includes the biological variation of the patient themself and the analytical variation of the detection system. The purpose of quality control (QC) in the laboratory is to detect the analytical variation as far as possible and