Celebrate Christmas with Randox Quality Control
T’was the week before Christmas and all through the lab not a thing could be heard not even a sound. The analyser lay silent asleep in the corner, the lab staff at home dreaming of a few days’ rest, only a few more days to go before the big day!
The big man in red, what will he bring those who already have everything? Peace, happiness and health for their loved ones throughout the festive break, that would be the wish for everyone to make. And what better way to ensure they stay healthy, well it all begins in the laboratory…
An important consideration to remember when choosing your lab Quality Control (QC) is that approximately 70% of clinical decisions are based on laboratory test results. It is therefore essential that the results gained from laboratory testing are accurate and reliable in order to provide the appropriate treatment and avoid or prevent potential misdiagnosis.
Patient results are of the utmost importance for a laboratory and therefore running the best Quality Control material should be at the top of their agenda. QC material should have a number of features that allow a lab to judge the overall quality of their output. These features include the controls ability to be commutable (which means how well it reacts as a replicate of a patient sample), is it a true third party control that has been manufactured to provide an independent and unbiased assessment of performance, does your control come with clinically relevant levels and does it have a long shelf life as well as a good open vial or reconstituted stability? These are the questions lab staff will be asking themselves when deciding on what QC is the right QC.
So stay off Santa’s naughty list by providing accurate and reliable patient test results, do this by employing Randox QC in your laboratory. Our controls have been designed to deliver significant cost savings without sacrificing on quality. With consolidated controls (combining up to 100 analytes in a single vial) your lab can reduce QC costs and preparation time, the inclusion of analytes present at clinical decision levels will eradicate the need for additional controls and because of our long shelf life (2 years for liquid controls, 4 years for lyophilised) and excellent stability claims your laboratory can be sure that expensive lot changes will be a thing of the past! Our controls can be described as true third party and this, combined with the commutable nature of the controls, leads to us being able to claim that we have the best Quality Control material around.
So this Christmas when deciding what QC to choose – make sure you look no further than Randox Quality Control. Our QC family is known as Acusera and our product offering includes QC and calibrator material, Interlaboratory Data Management Program (Acusera 24.7), the world’s largest international EQA/PT scheme better known as RIQAS and the newest addition to the family, Linearity or Calibration Verification material.
We have packages for every lab regardless of size and budget and we guarantee you will become ho-ho-hooked on Randox QC.
Wishing you all season’s greetings and a prosperous New Year from everyone at Randox QC.
Don’t Get Tricked This Halloween
Don’t Get Tricked This Halloween – Treat Your Lab to Randox True Third Party Controls Today!
Halloween – a celebration observed by many countries around the world on a yearly basis. Falling on October 31st this holiday is a chance for people to dress up, carve pumpkins, bob for apples, attend costume parties, trick-or-treat and tell scary stories.
It just so happens that we have a scary story for you – and what makes this story even scarier is that it’s a true story!
Our story starts off in a medical laboratory. This laboratory was running QC on their machine as they would do every day. Getting accurate results with no faults or problems arising from their machine, this laboratory was happy with how things were going – until one day when it all went wrong!
Having run their EQA/PT samples, the laboratory found themselves reviewing their report with shock –they noticed a large negative bias. To their horror the perceived ‘accuracy’ they had once achieved was now no longer the case. Right away the laboratory professional’s thoughts turned to the fact that approx. 70% of all clinical decisions are based on laboratory test results, meaning it is essential that the results provided are accurate and reliable in order to prevent potential misdiagnosis or inappropriate treatment. Had they sent incorrect patient results to the clinicians? Had a patient been misdiagnosed? Many thoughts fluttered around in their heads.
The laboratory repeated their QC and found that the results obtained were almost identical to the previous run. The laboratory knew there must be a problem with their QC or their instrument, so they began the troubleshooting process. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. “What was going on?” was the question on the lips of the laboratory professionals.
One of the laboratory professionals then stumbled across a case study that took place in the University of Verona and Academic Hospital of Parma, Italy. The study was related to a field recall of Intact PTH, the reagent was recalled after falsely elevated patient results were discovered. The alarming thing was that the same elevated performance was not identified by the instrument manufacturer’s control. The study reported that due to this issue there was potential for 40,000 inaccurate patient results from just 18 labs in the Lombardy region of Italy. The study also concluded that the issue could have been prevented if a third-party control, independent from calibrator materials had been used.
This PTH case study got the laboratory thinking that maybe they should source a true third party manufacturer… Having sampled a third party QC, the lab found their results now mirrored that of their EQA and patient samples and as such proceeded to make the switch from first party to third party.
The moral of this story is that first party controls can sometimes “trick” the lab into thinking their performance is acceptable. Quite often target values provided with first party quality controls are in the middle of the analytical range thus masking the issues at the low and high ends of the assay range. Laboratory professionals should “treat” their labs to the best QC material. ISO 15189 highlights that the “use of independent third party control materials should be considered, either instead of, or in addition to, any control materials supplied by the reagent or instrument manufacturer”. So this Halloween don’t randomly choose your QC supplier, treat your laboratory to the best, Randox QC.
All Randox controls are manufactured independently of any instrument or reagent, and designed for use with multiple instruments and methods ensuring, unbiased performance assessment.
Lipid Quality Controls
Our Acusera Lipid Quality Controls have been manufactured from 100% human serum to ensure they are commutable, mirroring the behaviour of a real patient sample, with minimal lot to lot value shifts. As all of our lipid quality controls are lyophilised, they contain no stabilisers or preservatives which are known to affect the overall performance of the controls. The multi-analyte controls enable test menu consolidation which, along with the four year shelf life from the date of manufacture, ensures minimal waste helping your lab reduce costs.
