Evaluation of the Beckman Coulter DxC 700 AU chemistry analyzer.

OBJECTIVES

We evaluated and defined the analytical performance of the Beckman Coulter DxC 700 AU analyzer compared to the Siemens Dimension Vista 500 analyzer.

DESIGN

and Methods: Performance characteristics included intra and inter-run precision, linearity/analytical measurement range, method correlation, and reference range verification. A total of 53 assays including 11 critical care, 19 general chemistries, 11 proteins, 10 urines, and 2 CSF analytes were tested. We also evaluated similarities and differences in assay methodologies between the 2 systems.

RESULTS

The DxC 700 AU demonstrated excellent precision, comparable analytical measurement ranges and strong method correlation with the Dimension Vista 500 for most serum/plasma assays. 95% of the intra-run and 95% of the inter-run precision QC levels showed <3.0%CV and <6.0%CV, respectively. None of the deviations were clinically significant. The AMRs for all analytes except 5 met the manufacturer's stated range. ALP, Lactate, U-glucose and CSF-glucose all recovered above the stated upper limit range, while prealbumin showed a smaller range. All analytes, except 14, showed slopes between 0.9 and 1.1 and/or biases <10%. Only ammonia, ferritin and lipase required significant reference range changes. The urine and CSF assays correlated very well with no adjustments in reference ranges required.

CONCLUSIONS

The analytical performance of the DxC 700 AU analyzer was acceptable with only a small number of analytes requiring significant reference range changes.