Annual Repaort on External Quality Assessment of Immunoassay Subcommittee in Korean Clinical Laboratory Survey (2008)

Two trials of external quality assessment were performed in 2008. The first and the second trials assessed by three test categories, i.e., tumor markers, thyroid hormones and immunoproteins (IgG, IgM, IgA, C3 and C4). Fifteen test items using immunoassay method were surveyed as scheduled. The number of participated laboratory of external quality assessment for Immunoassay Subcommittee were 437 institutions in the first trial survey and 476 institutions in the second survey.Fourteen control materials consisted of 12 home-made pooled sera and 2 commercial control sera (Liquimmune(R), Liquid Assayed Immunoassay Control, Microgenics Co, USA) were used. The results are summarized as follows. 1. Laboratories participating in external quality control program of immunoassay were 437 and 476 laboratories and the response rate were 94.6% and 98.7% in 2008. 2. Chemiluminiscence immunoassay autoanalyzers were most commonly used for immunoassay testing in the clinical laboratories for detecting tumor markers and hormones. 3. Some analyzers of a few test items showed variations of the test results of the same control material probably due to personal factors of the institution. 4. Workshops titled "Quality control of Immunoassay" and " Quality control of tumor markers" were held on September 5, 2008 and December 3, 2008 in cooperation with Annual Autumn Academic Conferences of Clinical laboratory and Quality Control and Immunoserology Subcommittee. The quality of the participating laboratories seems to be thought being continuously improved. And, this year, about 51 laboratories are newly participated to our Immunoassay Subcommittee.ope