EXPRESSION OF RESULTS IN CLINICAL LABORATORY SCIENCES - AN UPDATE

The aim of this review is to present some essential characteristics of the International System of Units (SI), especially the base kinds of quantities, units and symbols. IUPAC and IFCC recommendations to report results from clinical laboratories are indicated, including some recent developments in the nomenclature of derived quantities. It is constantly necessary to indicate 3 parts of a format, i.e. the system, the measured component or process and the kind of quantity. Each part of this format may be supplemented with information to improve understanding and comparability of data obtained at different calendar times or coming from different patients or from different laboratories. The proposed format is flexible enough to accept technical changes and is well adapted to microcomputers.