[Experience with a computer database in a cytogenetic laboratory].

The paper describes a computer system to support the data management in cytogenetics. Two major objectives are considered: the improvement of the quality and consistency of laboratory data and the support of data management in a large data set for research purposes. The entire system is divided into two logical parts. Firstly, a data collection module reads data from keyboard in an user-friendly way and checks for consistency including syntactic analysis of karyotype description. Secondly, the data are manipulated by a professional database system where three hierarchical data structures are introduced: 1. identification data, 2. investigation data and 3. karyotype description. Since 1984 we collected 1820 patients, 2800 investigations and 2760 karyotypes in the system. Currently, the system is reimplemented on IBM compatible machine using "dBase" database system in order to increase the operational speed and enhance the transportability of the system.