Laboratory standards in the assessment of the quality of care

Diabetes mellitus requires constant care. The main goal of this is prevention of interference with daily life and prevention of long-term complications. Laboratory methods mostly used include HbAlc and microalbuminuria testing. Several methods exist for these determinations. Moreover, no worldwide standards are available. Studies have shown that with the current techniques improvement of laboratory standardization is clearly required, but have also shown that this is possible even without 'synthetic standards', the ultimate standards which will not be available within the next 3-5 years.