Roy Midyett’s article about Empty QC (November 2012) was very interesting. He made some excellent points. When the people who write the inspection standards and their inspectors cannot provide sound reasoning as to what certain QC is actually measuring, maybe it’s time to take a look at why we do what we do. Is it being done because of habit, or because of the QC manufacturer’s pressure—the “ask your Doctor if QC is right for you” ploy, etc.?
Roy is a critical thinker. More Roys are needed to bring needed refinements to our industry.
—Rob Schmeling, TS (ABB)
Andrologist
Reproductive Specialty Center
Milwaukee, WI
I agree with Roy Midyett’s article for the most part. We do use the Streck ESR Auto-Plus, so I do believe quality control of the instrument is an appropriate action.
I totally agree that I cannot figure out why we are doing hemacytometer controls. The control is only required to be done once every eight hours, so we could have one staff member performing the quality control with the first fluid of the 8-hour period and other staff performing subsequent fluid hemacytometer counts that never look at the control. (This does not ensure the operators are competent.)We do use disposable hemacytometers, so the argument could be made that they need to be quality controlled, but even that logic doesn’t hold if you are not quality controlling each one.
There is more sense in making sure the sides of the hemacytomer are within the defined agreement to ensure it is charged correctly rather than using any commercial quality control product. If the hemacytometer quality control doesn’t work, then we get a new vial, as Roy speaks to as well. We don’t quality control manual differentials or manual retic counts, so why do we quality control manual fluid counts?
—Name withheld by request
For more than 30 years, Iris Diagnostics has represented the gold standard in automated urinalysis imaging on a global basis, providing productivity solutions to meet the challenges facing the clinical laboratory.
Unfortunately, numerous inaccuracies in your recent article “Automated urinalysis in the clinical lab” (October 2012) have resulted in confusion and several questions from our customers.
- In Table 3 (page12): The List Price of $140K is incorrect and describes an Iris iQ®200 (iQ200 Automated Urine Microscopy Analyzer and the AUTION MAX AX-4280 Automated Urine Chemistry Analyzer). Iris discontinued the sale of the AX-4280 instrument in 2010. In 2011, Iris released the iChem®VELOCITY Automated Urine Chemistry Analyzer, which is sold either as a standalone instrument or connected to the iQ200, as a fully integrated workcell known as the iRICELL.
- In Table 3: The instrument throughput rate was incorrectly stated to be 65 samples/hour. As Iris Diagnostics recognizes that “one size” does not fit the needs of every laboratory, the iRICELL is available in a variety of throughput speeds (up to 101 samples per hour). As such, Continuing Education Test question #18 (page 14) will be answered incorrectly by any technologist who is familiar with the iQ200.
- In Table 3: The manual review rate was stated as 60%. The iQ200 provides digital images of individual urine particles, for on-screen verification by the technologist, virtually eliminating the need for manual microscopic review. The on-screen verification rate is determined by the laboratory’s criteria for this process. As stated in our advertisement that accompanied this article, iQ200 customers typically experience a manual microscopic review rate of less than 4%.
- In Table 2 (page 10), although various sources for the data are cited, the table presents the information in a way that suggests equivalence across all studies and instrument platforms. This is very misleading. The ideal study to show comparison would be all instruments running the same samples in a single study, something not shown in the table.
- In the Section “Urine culture screening,” the Iris iQ200 is referred to as an iRIS 200i.
It is unfortunate that Iris Diagnostics was not contacted to verify the accuracy of the information regarding the Iris systems before publication, but we do appreciate the opportunity to do so now.
—Erika Johnson, VP Marketing
Brian D. Miller, VP Clinical Affairs
Iris Diagnostics
