ASVCP guidelines: allowable total error guidelines for biochemistry.

Area of Science:

• Veterinary diagnostics
• Analytical chemistry
• Laboratory medicine

Background:

• Laboratory equipment performance can degrade over time, necessitating regular assessments to ensure accurate and precise results.
• Comparability of results is crucial in veterinary medicine due to diverse settings (general practitioners, referral hospitals, reference laboratories) and instruments.
• Allowable total error (TEa) is a key concept for defining acceptable analytical performance in laboratory testing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide guidelines for the determination and interpretation of TEa for common biochemical analytes in cats, dogs, and horses.
• To establish TEa values applicable to various veterinary laboratory settings, from point-of-care analyzers to complex equipment.
• To ensure laboratory variation does not impact clinical decision-making in veterinary diagnostics.

Main Methods:

• Recommendations for the determination and interpretation of TEa.
• Focus on commonly measured biochemical analytes in cats, dogs, and horses.
• Consideration of equipment used in general practice in-clinic laboratories and reference laboratories.

Main Results:

• Proposed TEa values for biochemical analytes in companion animals.
• Guidelines are applicable to both in-clinic and reference veterinary laboratories.
• TEa serves as a measure for instrument performance assessment, quality control validation, and result comparability.

Conclusions:

• The guidelines offer a straightforward approach to assessing instrument analytical performance in veterinary diagnostics.
• Implementing these TEa guidelines promotes consistency and reliability of laboratory results across different veterinary facilities.
• Accurate and comparable results are essential for informed clinical decision-making in veterinary patient care.