1 – Program overview

This external quality assessment program provides normal and pathological electrophoretic profiles for assessing monoclonal gammopathy (paraproteinemia) diagnosis and type determination.

The reports include statistical processing of quantitative results and the analysis of qualitative results: interpretation of electrophoresis, immunofixation and immunotyping performed to identify a monoclonal band detected by electrophoresis.

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: 6
Number of control samples per survey: 1
Number of samples per year: 6

3 – List of analytes assessed 

• Total protein
• Kappa free light chains
• Lambda free light chains
• IgA
• IgG
• IgM
• Protein electrophoresis
  • - Albumin
  • - α₁-Globulins
  • - α₂-Globulins
  • - β-Globulins
  • - β₁-Globulins
  • - β₂-Globulins
  • - γ-Globulins
• Monoclonal immunoglobulin typing

4 – Description of the control samples

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

5 – Clinical cases

Clinical cases are provided with each survey.