Date: Wed Oct 06 10:20:00 PDT 2004
From: "O'Brien, Pat" <address@hidden>
Subject: RE: Sample type prefixes - internationally recognized
To: "'James Busser'" <address@hidden>
Dear Dr. Busser:
Thank you for your interest.
Although I have perused a number of papers on this subject, the following
sources were the ones primarily used to help with standardizing the way we
report results:
*International Federation of Clinical Chemistry
*International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
*SI Manual in Health Care produced by Metric Commission Canada Sector
Committee 9.10 Health and Welfare.
College of American Pathologists
There have been some prefixes that are recommended by the IFCC that I chose
not to use at this time because I thought they might cause confusion. These
are:
Erc for Red Blood Cell
Lkc for White Blood Cell
Sf for Cerebral Spinal Fluid
Also, there seem to be no universally recognized prefixes for "semen" or
"nasal".
It is a difficult job to employ all the recommendations of these committees
when I know that some of these abbreviations are not yet recognized, yet if
we don't use them, they never will be....something of a dilemma.
Our purpose is to standardize the appearance of our reports and hopefully
make them clearly readable and understood. We are hampered by space
limitations, so still have a product that is not perfect.
I hope this information is useful to you.
Sincerely,
Pat O'Brien, R+D Tech, MDS