Reference Intervals: A Users Guide

This book describes reference intervals and their use in the clinical laboratory setting. Intended for those who work in the area of laboratory medicine, Reference Intervals addresses the common methods and limitations of deriving and interpreting reference intervals and covers the following topics:

• History and use of the reference interval
• Description of the current standards
• Real-world constraints and solutions
• Statistical modeling of reference intervals
• How to deal with outliers and/or small samples
• Description of robust reference intervals
• The transference problem

The accompanying CD-ROM contains 264 tables of reference intervals, based on physician-determined healthy individuals, covering 33 analytes and 3 ethnic groups. Included among these tables are reference intervals based on the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). Also included: SAS programs that derive traditional and robust reference intervals with outliers removed.

System Requirements for the CD-ROM:

• Microsoft Windows 98 or above and Microsoft Word 97 or above to view the NHANES reference intervals
• SAS Version 8.2 or above to derive reference intervals from raw data