Hemoglobinuria and hematuria: accuracy and precision of laboratory diagnosis

Five methods of assessing blood in urine were studied and compared: sedimentation count, hemacytometry, "Clini-lab" reagent strip and "N-Multistix" and "ChemStrip-8" dipsticks. The minimum sensitivity of two commercially available urine dip-stick procedures for blood was established. The study includes method association, assay variation among and within technologists, accuracy, precision, and sensitivity. Our results demonstrate generally poor association between results by the dip-stick procedures and the hemacytometer or sedimentation count. Results by the last two procedures also showed very poor association with each other.