In-House Testing

[DW]

I wonder if I could bring up a point to question and see what others have experienced.

I have just been reading Roger's mail,who has a Spitz and had a worrying time recently when the in-house results had shown a drop, wereas, when sent off to the Lab it turned out that things were the same as they had been two weeks before.  relief indeed.

Having had spurious results from in-house blood tests being done, I wonder why this is.    It has happened quite a bit with us - at the start we were getting really high counts (some in the 500-600 range at one point) but the Lab was returning mid-200's !!
I can appreciate that Vet's use a different scale but it got me thinking that when dogs are first diagnosed, they are so by the initial in-house results and I wonder how we can rely on correct diagnosis.   What about all the hundreds of dogs that undergo in-house tests for loads of other reasons......how can they be correctly diagnosed when the results can be so ambiguous.

It would be so useful if we could rely on in-house results...to say nothing about the fact that it costs such a lot to send off these samples to the Labs !!!

Just wondered what others thought.    I'm assuming that most in-house results are accurateand wonder if it might be down to specific equipment?

Gwyneth

[Catherine]

I would have thought most blood testing equipment would have to be calibrated regularly although not sure how often.

There could be a slight difference between in-house and laboratories but if it is occurring on a regular basis and/or is a big difference I would question your vet about it! You should not need to have to send blood off every time, just occasionally to check something specifically.

[Penel CIMDA moderator]

I'd ask how often their machines are calibrated.