Quality control validation in veterinary laboratories

Quality control (QC) validation is used to determine: 1) whether statistical QC procedures are appropriate for detecting medically important errors; and 2) the equality of performance required by different laboratory tests. QC validation is well documented in the medical literature, but we are unaware of studies addressing its application, problems or unique differences in veterinary laboratories. We applied QC validation to automated hematology and biochemistry analyses in our laboratories, with goals of >/= 90% probability of error detection and