Coulter^® LH 750^TM에 의한 백혈구 감별계산 및 Suspect Flags의 평가

Evaluation of Coulter^® LH 750^TM on Leukocyte Differential Count and Suspect Flags

Automatic hematology analyzers provide the leukocyte differential count and the useful flags of the various hematological parameters. We compared LH 750 (Beckman Coulter Co., Miami, FL, USA) with manual method on differential leukocyte counts and evaluated the usefulness of the suspect flags, provided by this instrument. The comparison of leukocyte differential counts between two methods showed good correlation coefficient (r), which were 0.95 (neutrophil), 0.92 (lymphocyte), 0.82 (monocyte) and 0.95 (eosinophil). The frequency of the total flags displayed on LH 750 were 15.5%, which included immature granulocyte/left shift 63.5%, nucleated RBC 14.6%, platelet clumps 13.1%, variant lymphocyte 50% and blast 16.6%. This instrument showed higher positive predictive value in the flags such as platelet clumps 68.8%, immature granulocyte/left shift 61.5%, nucleated RBC 27.3%, variant lymphocyte 50% and blast 16.7%. In this study, the leukocyte differential counts of LH 750 showed good correlation with manual method and the suspect flags also showed a good performance for applying the criteria of re-examination in the clinical laboratory.