1 – Program overview

This external quality assessment program assesses the accuracy of quantitative methods for serum creatinine, urinary creatinine, urinary albumin (microalbumin) and cystatin C. It also evaluates the different clearance calculations performed (with the exception of the MDRD formula).

Participating labs can choose to be assessed for all the analytes of this program, or simply a subset of analytes of interest.

2 – Assessment frequency

Number of surveys per year: 5
Number of control samples per survey: 2 (1 serum sample and 1 urine sample) or 4 (2 serum samples and 2 urine samples)
Number of samples per year: 14 (6 lyophilised serum and 6 lyophilised urine samples + 1 fresh serum and 1 fresh urine sample)

3 – List of analytes assessed 

• Albumin/creatinine ratio
• Creatinine clearance, measured
• Cystatin C
• GFR evaluation: CKD-EPI
• GFR evaluation: EKFC
• GFR evaluation: KFRE
• Serum creatinine
• Urinary albumin (microalbumin)
• Urinary creatinine

4 – Description of the control samples

Lyophilised human control serum and urine (6 serum samples and 6 urine samples to be resuspended in 1 mL of distilled water).

1 fresh serum and 1 fresh urine, control of human origin (ready-to-use, 0.5 mL of serum and 1.5 mL of urine).

5 – Demographic data

The patient’s demographic data (sex, ethnic origin, weight, age) and diuresis rate are provided in the technical notes of the program.