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Comparison of Chemcard Cholesterol test and laboratory cholesterol measurements
Author(s) -
Gan I. E. T.,
Schier G. M.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 0004-8291
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-5994.1995.tb02860.x
Subject(s) - medicine , cholesterol , ldl cholesterol , test (biology) , serum cholesterol , standard deviation , statistics , mathematics , paleontology , biology
Background: The Chemcard cholesterol test has been designed to estimate cholesterol levels in patients in General Practitioners' surgeries. The patients displaying elevated cholesterol levels may then be referred for a more accurate test at a recognised laboratory. Aims: To compare the accuracy of the Chemcard cholesterol procedure with a standardised laboratory procedure for estimating cholesterol levels. Methods: The Chemcard cholesterol procedure was applied to 200 subjects from the community, who were enrolled in a cardiovascular risk assessment programme. Results: The correlation coefficient between the paired measurements was 0.83. The Chemcard cholesterol procedure gave slightly higher results than did the laboratory procedure as shown by the mean (± standard deviation) difference between the two methods of 0.16 ± 0.58 mmol/L. Conclusions: The poor agreement between the two methods and the potential misclassi‐fication by Chemcard suggests that the Chemcard is not a reliable test system. The high level of risk group misclassification found in this study refutes the manufacturer's claims and does not eliminate the need for formal laboratory cholesterol measurement.