Accuracy of Some Routine Methods Used in Clinical Chemistry as Judged by Isotope Dilution-Mass Spectrometry

Serum from patients was pooled, filtered, dispensed, and frozen. This pooled specimen was used for accuracy control in 64 participating laboratories in Sweden. Mean values (“state-of-the-art ” values) were obtained for cre-atinine, cholesterol, glucose, urea, uric acid, and cortisol. These values were compared with values obtained with highly accurate reference methods based on isotope dilution-mass spectrometry. Differences were marked in the case of determination of creatinine and cortisol. Concerning the other components, the differences be-tween the state-of-the-art value and the values obtained with the reference methods were negligible. Moreover, the glucose oxidase and the oxime methods for determination of glucose and urea were found to give significantly lower values than the hexokinase and urease methods, re