2020 Volume 69 Issue 3 Pages 381-388
The Aichi Association of Medical Technologists (AAMT) conducts the Aichi Clinical Laboratory Quality Control Survey (AAMT EQA) to investigate the quality of clinical tests in each laboratory and to correct the differences among laboratories located in Aichi prefecture. Recently, the importance of external quality assessment (EQA) has been increasing with the partial revision of the medical law. Therefore, we reviewed the activities of the immunoserological section from 2016 to 2018, and considered future prospects. The features of the immunoserological section in the AAMT survey are as follows: (1) human pooled sera are used as EQA samples and (2) PIVKA-II is the special target for EQA. However, the use of human pooled sera is restricted owing to ethical issues, which actually causes unexpected reactions in the measurement, and thus may need to be reconsidered. The results of the PIVKA-II survey revealed that differences in the reagents used among participating laboratories was a major problem, as well as other target items. In addition, when evaluating respective reagents, it is also a big problem that a proper judgement is difficult for a small number of groups; thus, it is necessary to develop an optimal method to identically assess every participating laboratory. AAMT also conducts secondary surveys for the participants whose results did not seem to be satisfactory. Furthermore, AAMT provides an opportunity to discuss the results of the survey to improve the quality of laboratory tests for each participant. Indeed, the outcome differs considerably from lab to lab. In the future, the number of participating laboratories in the AAMT survey will be increased. Thus, we need to reconsider the significance of the AAMT regional surveys. Moreover, we would like to work hard to contribute to the improvement of the quality of clinical testing in Aichi.
