What's New: August 2013

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

HAS YOUR QC BEEN VANITY-SIZED?

In clothing, it's well-known that sizes have been changing for both men and women. Manufacturers are "down-sizing" their clothing to soothe the vanity of their customers.

Have diagnostic manufacturers been doing the same thing to laboratories?

Does my SD fit or flatter my lab's real performance?
https://westgard.com/vanity-qc.htm

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Hitting a Goal, but Missing the Point? (Or Missing Both?)

With so many different sources of laboratory requirements, it's a challenge for laboratories to choose the most appropriate goal. Sometimes labs can choose targets that are too easy to hit. Other times, labs might choose targets that no method on the market can hit. As we look at some examples, we try to determine which goals are the right goals.

For example, can any method hit the target for Sodium?
https://westgard.com/goals-and-targets.htm

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Cancer Markers on the UniCel DxI

In recent issues of the newsletter, we've turned our attention to tumor markers. This analysis is a look at the DxI 800 Immunoassay Analyzer and its performance for five tumor markers.

Sigma-metrics of tumor markers
https://westgard.com/cancer-markers-unicel.htm