Error Estimation In Glucose Testing Among Private And Public Medical Laboratories In Kalar District

Abstract

Blood glucose estimation in medical labs is widely recommended by medical professionals inmany clinical cases and may present with great opportunity for error that may impact the qualityof test results and can occur at any stage of test processing which may be preanalytic, analytic, orpostanalytic.In this study, twenty three public and private medical laboratories were assigned to measureglucose level in three standard solutions, labeled as: testA, testB and testC with concentrations of75mg/dl, 150mg/dl and 250mg/dl, respectively. The standard error in glucose testing for thedifferent solutions was assessed after receiving the data from the laboratories.It is observed that gender; years of experience, specialty, and scientific qualification of thelab technician had no observable effect on error and accuracy in glucose testing.The results showed an increase in the standard error while increasing the concentration ofstandards as follow: 77.52±3.86mg/dl for TestA, 148.61±7.72mg/dl for TestB and240.74±14.45mg/dl for TestC. It is also demonstrated higher standard error in glucose testingwith glucometers than spectrophotometric method. Using glucometer, the measuredconcentrations for TestA, TestB and TestC, were 75.14±11.25mg/dl, 159.29±24.22mg/dl and237.57±33.18mg/dl respectively. Meanwhile the measure for TestA, TestB and TestC, usingspectrophotometric method, were 78.56±3.0mg/dl, 143.94±4.26mg/dl and 242.13±15.71mg/dl byrespectively. In spite of a percentage of errors, The results concludes the superiority colorimetricenzymatic over point of care testing (glucometer) but further studies are recommended to assesserror in glucose testing in both methods.