Display System for Laboratory Data

To the Editor:— The proposal of Rushmer 1 for a scaling system based on the normal range to display clinical laboratory data is essentially the same as that in my paper 185 :864, 1963). A similar proposal has been made by Grasbeck. 2 These standardized units, are used in New Zealand and Finland, but I am unaware of any use of them in the United States. Nationwide surveys of laboratories in this and other countries show that most laboratories are unaware of how the values for their tests relate to "true normal ranges." In my paper, a method was given for estimating normal ranges by individual laboratories from tests of specimens. A similar proposal was made independently by Curnow and Sheard. 3 Unless a laboratory has a realistic estimate of its normal range, standardized units of the type proposed can do nothing but reveal the inadequacy of the normal range