Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal

Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
A major goal of quality assurance is the minimization of error rates in order to augment patient safety, six sigma or sigma metrics were used to assess the analytical quality of automated clinical chemistry, six sigma metrics is used in combination with total allowable error, method imprecision and bias. The goal is to achieve the highest possible sigma scale within the acceptable limits of total allowable error.
OBJECTIVE :
For assessment of sigma metrics results of serum parameters of liver and kidney function test tested by automated chemistry analyzer in Medical City Hospital.
METHODS:
In the current study, internal quality control (IQC) and external quality assessment (EQA) data were analyzed for the period from May 2017 to July 2017 using chemistry auto analyzer (Siemens Dimension RxL Max) at the Teaching Laboratories of the Medical City Hospital. Mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation %, bias %, total error and sigma metrics were calculated for serum urea, creatinine, total serum bilirubin(TSB), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), aspartate aminotransferase(AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT).
RESULTS:
Excellent sigma values (≥6) were elicited for TSB (14) and AST (7.7), Satisfactory sigma values (≥3) were elicited for ALT (6) and ALP (4.6), while serum urea and creatinine performed poorly (2.5), (2.8) respectively on the sigma scale.
CONCLUSION:
Total serum bilirubin was the best performer on six sigma scale, for AST, ALT and ALP the sigma results was accepted. While serum urea and creatinine had poor performance, so there is need for improvement of their methods which should be controlled with greater attention to ensure quality.
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