Development of measurement methods and contributions to medical care in the clinical laboratory
Sugiuchi, H.
Rinsho Byori. Japanese Journal of Clinical Pathology 56(1): 66-71
2008
ISSN/ISBN: 0047-1860 PMID: 18318234 Document Number: 628052
The level of professional interest in clinical chemistry shown by technologists tends to erode as the recent advances in automation of clinical laboratory tests have made it possible to obtain accurate data by simply using reagent kits. Therefore, the most of medical technologists have foolish preconceptions to be impossible for the development of the new measurement methods in the clinical laboratory. However, there should be many studies that medical technologist should perform. In this paper, I give an outline about practice of the chemical reagent development in the laboratory and the effect mainly on the HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) homogeneous method which we developed. Because homogenous methods can easily be performed by automated analyzers, they have been widely implemented not only in Japan, but also throughout the rest of the world. When compared to the precipitation methods requiring centrifugation, homogenous assays are superior because of the great savings in manpower, many more samples can be analyzed within a given time, smaller quantities of samples are required, assay times are shorter, and measurement accuracy is greater. The most important contribution of homogenous assays is that because measurement accuracy is higher, the degree of inter-laboratory differences has been markedly decreased, thus making it possible to establish international standards.