CLINICAL IMPORTANCE OF DETERMINING SERUM FERRITIN. ESTABLISHING REFERENCE VALUES
Abstract:
The diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia is based on the determination of serum hemoglobin (iron in red blood cells), serum iron (iron in circulation) and ferritin (iron in storage). For an accurate interpretation of laboratory test results and their qualification as normal or pathological, it is essential that each laboratory should establish its own reference intervals for the population it serves. This study defines reference intervals for serum ferritin in children and teenagers using ferritin determinations on a significant number of patients (hospitalized or outpatients). Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Sibiu Clinical Pediatric Hospital using electronic laboratory data archive from January – December 2010. Serum ferritin measurements have been made on a sample of 600 patients by means of the MiniVidas, Biomerieux analyzer. Data analysis has been performed with the SPSS program using robust method to get 2.5 and 97.5 percentiles. Results and conclusions: The results of our study have been compared with those in Lothar Thomas’s manual “Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics” (1998) and with those obtained by Roche Diagnostics in the 2004 study. The conclusion is that the reference values obtained in this study differ from those mentioned in the literature due both to different measurement methods and to different structure of the age groups.
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