The importance of quality control validation and relationships with total error quality goals and bias in the interpretation of laboratory results.

The objective of a quality system is to provide accurate and reliable results for clinical decision-making. One part of this is Quality Control (QC) validation. QC validation is not routinely applied in veterinary laboratories.

Evaluation of a species-specific C-reactive protein assay for the dog on the ABX Pentra 400 clinical chemistry analyzer.

Background: A canine-specific immunoturbidimetric CRP assay, Gentian Canine CRP Immunoassay) with species-specific controls and calibrators was introduced and recently evaluated on the clinical chemistry analyzer Abbott Architect c4000 as well as on the Olympus AU600. Aims of our study were 1) to independently evaluate the canine-specific CRP assay on the ABX Pentra 400 clinical chemistry analyzer in comparison to the previously validated human-based immunoturbidimetric assay (Randox Canine CRP assay) and 2) to assess the impact of different sample types (serum versus heparinized plasma) on the results. Imprecision, accuracy, interference and the prozone effect were determined using samples from healthy and diseased dogs (n = 278).