ANALYSIS OF RED-BLOOD-CELL VOLUME DISTRIBUTIONS USING THE ICSH REFERENCE METHOD - DETECTION OF SEQUENTIAL-CHANGES IN DISTRIBUTIONS DETERMINED BY HYDRODYNAMIC FOCUSING
Ce. Mclaren et al., ANALYSIS OF RED-BLOOD-CELL VOLUME DISTRIBUTIONS USING THE ICSH REFERENCE METHOD - DETECTION OF SEQUENTIAL-CHANGES IN DISTRIBUTIONS DETERMINED BY HYDRODYNAMIC FOCUSING, Clinical and laboratory haematology, 15(3), 1993, pp. 173-184
Automated haematology analysers determine the volume of red blood cell
s and provide an erythrocyte volume distribution. For analysis of thes
e distributions, the International Council for Standardization in Haem
atology (ICSH) has recommended methods for fitting a single reference
distribution and assessing its goodness of fit (ICSH, 1990). To evalua
te the suitability of the ICSH reference method for routine use with h
aematology analysers, we applied the ICSH method to a reference sample
group of 71 healthy individuals and to 618 samples collected from 112
patients. Samples were measured using Sysmex NE-8000 haematology anal
ysers. Each distribution was doubly truncated to eliminate artefactual
frequency counts and tested for goodness of fit to a single lognormal
distribution (McLaren, Brittenham & Hasselblad, 1986) and mixtures of
lognormal distributions (McLaren et al., 1991). Analysis of data from
healthy individuals demonstrated the reproducibility of the ICSH refe
rence method. Analysis of data from patients illustrated the ability o
f the method to detect sequential changes in distributions, providing
a useful tool to monitor the effect of therapeutic intervention and bl
ood transfusion.