The analytical performance of the Ciba Corning ACS:180 automated immunoassay system. A multicentre evaluation

The analytical performance of the Ciba Corning ACS:180 automated immunoassay system was studied according to a revised version of the ECCLS guidelines and partly according to a protocol of the Société Francaise de Biologie Clinique (SFBC) in a multicentre evaluation involving three laboratories. The determination of 8 analytes yielded more than 50,000 data. The values for imprecision showed that the ACS:180 is comparable to the ES-600, and gives better results for many analytes than other comparison methods. The recovery of system-assigned values in control sera was acceptable for all analytes. The upper limits of linearity claimed by the manufacturer were confirmed for all analytes. In many cases, the results for patients' samples showed good agreement between the ACS:180 and several different comparison methods. One exception was lutropin, with a large spread of the data. Furthermore, for human chorionic gonadotropin and prostate-specific antigen, the slopes of the fitting lines were significantly higher than 1. Triacylglycerols and haemoglobin did not significantly influence the measurements of any analyte. Bilirubin affected the measurement of triiodothyronine and human chorionic gonadotropin. Significant drift or carry-over effects were not detected. The selective ACS:180 is fully automatic, requires relative short personnel time, and was easy to operate.