M. Buttarello et al., DIAGNOSTIC PERFORMANCE - A COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF THE LEUKOCYTE DIFFERENTIAL COUNT ON 4 AUTOMATED HEMATOLOGY ANALYZERS, European journal of clinical chemistry and clinical biochemistry, 31(4), 1993, pp. 251-258
The diagnostic performance of the haematology analysers, Technicon H1,
Sysmex NE 8000, Coulter STKS and Sequoia Cell Dyn 3000 was determined
by comparing their results for automated differential counting with t
he result obtained for 400 cells by the manual microscopic method. The
se comparative studies were performed on a group of adults, containing
both normal individuals (n = 150) and those affected by various patho
logies (n = 113). The number of morphologically false negatives is low
for all the systems (from 1.8% for the Cell Dyn 3000 to 6.2% for the
NE 8000), while the number of distributionally false negatives was sli
ghtly higher (from 4.4% for the Cell Dyn 3000 to 7% for the H1 and NE
8000). The morphological flags, though useful for improving the diagno
stic performance of the instruments, show a rather modest sensitivity
when taken individually: immature granulocytes/bands from 71% for the
STKS to 43% for the NE 8000; blasts from 66.6% for the H1 to 53.3% for
the STKS, atypical lymphocytes from 59% for the H1 to 13.6% for the N
E 8000; erythroblasts from 42.8% for the STKS to 7% for the NE 8000.