Bio-Rad’s Liquichek Serum Indices are designed for the monitoring of instrument responses to detect hemolyzed, icteric or lipemic (HIL) samples. HIL interferences are the most commonly tested interferences that can affect the integrity of patient samples in the clinical laboratory. Recently, the results of an efficacy study for Liquichek Serum Indices were published in the journal Clinical Chimica Acta, a peer-reviewed journal covering research in clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine.
The study was conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital using four Roche Cobas c701 clinical chemistry analyzers to evaluate the Liquichek Serum Indices in a daily quality control routine. The study established a fixed mean and standard deviation target across the four instruments and used these to evaluate the QC results obtained during the following two months, with the QC routine run twice per day for each analyzer. Data were recorded in Bio-Rad’s Unity Real Time QC data management software and evaluated with respect to each interferent’s fixed mean and coefficient of variation (%CV).
The Liquichek Serum Indices were easily incorporated into the data management software, which allows monitoring of QC rules and L-J charts in the same manner as analyte-specific QC; the results can also be assessed against a peer group of users from other laboratories to provide additional confidence in QC material and instrument performance. Detailed statistics for the full two-month study and corresponding peer groups statistics were included in the published report. The authors concluded that “the Bio-Rad Liquichek Serum Indices product can serve as an effective means of monitoring specimen integrity checks in a manner congruous with existing QC programs.”
Utilizing the automated HIL detection feature of an instrument in combination with the Liquichek Serum Indices can help reduce errors by eliminating the need for manual inspection by a laboratory technician, according to Bio-Rad.