Tiroid Fonksiyon testlerinin analitik performansının değerlendirilmesinde; 6 sigma metodolojisi.

Background: Sigma metric evaluation is a measure of quality in evaluating and comparing analytical performance in laboratories. Six Sigma can be used as a clinical analytical phase assessment methodology to form an internal quality control (IQC) strategy and plan its frequency. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the analytical performance of thyroid function panel (TSH, sT3 and sT4) which is one of the most requested tests in routine. Materials and Methods: We analyzed six sigma levels via using IQC results retrieved from laboratory information system for three months period. Both bias and variation coefficient were calculated from the internal quality control results. TEa parameter; based on the biological variation data of Ricos. The calculated sigma values were classified as follows: ">5", "4-5", "3-4" and "<3" very good, good, minimum and unacceptable respectively. Results: The sigma values of TSH, fT3 and fT4 tests according to the 3-month data of all three IQC levels were found to be >3.74, >2.27 and >1.73, respectively. Conclusion: Our result showed that TSH performance is good and sT3 and sT4 performance are unacceptable. Generally, although the laboratories manage the analytical period quality with the coefficient of variation obtained from IQC data, sigma metric evaluation has shown us that we should make a stricter IQC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]