Analytical performance of the selective, automatic multianalyser Olympus AU 5031

The analytical performance of the selective, automatic multianalyser Olympus AU 5031 was evaluated over four months and assessed for practicability for another eight months. The evaluation followed the ECCLS guidelines. Twenty routine parameters were measured. In addition, sodium and potassium were determined on an attached flame photometric unit. Both the agreement between the eights photometers per unit and the temperature behaviour in the cuvettes was satisfactory. The imprecisions were very good. The within-run imprecision was below 1.5% for the majority of the parameters. The imprecision between days was below 5%, with the exception of creatine phosphokinase (7.4%). Glutamate dehydrogenase gave an imprecision of between 4.0% and 15.9%, which, however, is more likely due to the low activities measured rather than the fault of analyser. The recovery of the assigned values in 12 control sera was between 95% and 105% for 14 tests. Three of the remaining eight tests yielded recoveries with deviations between 10% and 18% (alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and bilirubin). No drift effects were observed and neither a sample carry-over nor a reagent carry-over were detected. Most tests were linear over a very wide range. Only afew tests (mainly lipase and glutamate dehydrogenase) required measurement repetitions with diluted samples. The correlation with routine instruments and tests was close. However, corrections were necessary for 14 of the 22 tests. This was not due to the performance of the analyser but, rather, to the different methodologies of compared tests, or different working temperatures on the comparison instruments, or a lack of accuracy for some of the AU tests.