Evaluation and application of automated quality control of automatic pipeline in clinical biochemical and immunological detection / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To assess the applicability of fully automatic pipeline automated testing for internal quality control (automated quality control).Methods:Stability, assay efficiency and implementation costs of 18 biochemical tests, 5 immunoturbidimetric tests and 11 chemical illuminescent tests in the Department of Laboratory Medicine of Peking Union Hospital from January 2019 to July 2022 were evaluated using automated quality control implementation methods. The detailed method is as follows quality control materials for biochemical, immunoturbidimetric and chemiluminescent tests were stored in the refrigerator in the pipeline which was controlled by the intermediate software, and were automatically retrieved and tested as pre-set followed by documenting and storing. The quality control setup for the biochemical tests included refreshing quality control materials daily and weekly,both of which were paralleled for 3 months. The on-line storage stability of quality control materials in the pipeline was evaluated by comparing the coefficients of variation ( CV) of the quality control results between the two patterns. Effect of automated quality control application was evaluated using 6 indicators, including the results′ variation of automatically performed and manually performed quality controls, the out-of-controlled rate, the consumption of quality control materials, the change of staff workload, the impact on the testing time of the first sample, and the failure rate of automated quality control. Results:(1) Storage stability of quality control materials in the pipeline under the pattern of weekly refresh of the biochemical quality control materials, except for total carbon dioxide (TCO 2) (the CVs of low and high level quality control were respectively 20.24% and 21.82%) and sodium (the CV of low level quality control was 1.51%) that were greater than the allowable variation set by the laboratory, the CVs of the rest tests meet the lab requirements on the allowable variations. (2) The results′ variation of quality control in automatically performed and manually performed control patterns in the patterns of daily refresh of biochemical quality control materials and weekly refresh of immunoturbidimetric and chemiluminescent quality control materials, the CVs of both low and high levels of quality control were lower in the automatically performed control pattern than that in manually performed pattern for 8 chemiluminescent items of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, estradiol, follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, serum ferritin, serum folic acid, vitamin B12 and testosterone, 3 immunologic items of complement 3, C reactive protein and immunoglobulin G, and 10 biochemical items of alkaline phosphatase, glucose, calcium, chloride, potassium, lactate dehydrogenase, sodium, urea, low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and adenosine deaminase. The out-of-control rates of biochemistry, immunoturbidimetric and chemiluminescence tests in both quality control patterns conformed with the clinical routine work requirements. (3) Comparison of quality control materials′ consumption compared with manually performed quality control, weekly consumption of automatically performed chemiluminescent quality control materials decreased 37.5% (from 8 ml to 5 ml); weekly consumption of automatically performed immunoturbidimetric quality control materials decreased 33.3% (from 3 ml to 2 ml). (4)Comparison of staff workload and first sample testing time compared with manually performed quality control, automatical quality control reduced manual work by about 156 steps per week, and the daily initial testing time was earlier by 15 min on average. The failure rate was 54.5% (37/64) during the early-stage application of the automated quality control which dropped to 10.2% (13/128) in the late-stage. Conclusion:The results of automated quality control detected in the pipeline system meet the quality indicators′ requirements of the laboratory, and the application of automated quality control can improve the quality control, save costs, reduce workload, and improve work efficiency.