Evaluation of the Sysmex NE-8000. Automated hematology analyzer in a high-volume outpatient laboratory

An evaluation of SYSMEX NE-8000 (Toa Medical Electronics Co., Ltd., Kobe, Japan) hematology analyzer, including its automated five-part white blood cell (WBC) differential count, was performed in a high-volume outpatient laboratory. Precision, mixing studies, stability, carry-over, and linearity were all within the limits stated by the manufacturer. Evaluation of the five-part WBC differential revealed excellent correlation with manual differential neutrophil and lymphocyte counts. Monocyte, eosinophil, and basophil data were acceptable given the known poor precision of 200 cell manual WBC differential counts when low percentages of individual cell types are present. Overall, flagging for morphologic abnormalities displayed a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 97%. The combination of the flagging system with the visual record provided by the NE-8000 WBC histogram represents an effective tool for separating normal from abnormal specimens, and allows considerable selectivity in the performance of follow-up manual WBC differential counts.