| dc.description.abstract | Aim/Objective: To assess the diagnostic performance of TrueHb ® point-of-care (POC)
hemometer compared with Sysmex i3 analyzer at International Hospital Kampala, Uganda.
Materials and methods: We analyzed ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid blood samples to
estimate hemoglobin (Hb) levels using parallel testing with TrueHb ® hemometer and Sysmex
i3 analyzer. Data were analyzed to ascertain the diagnostic performance of the test assays
using the Bland and Altman method. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive
values were calculated.
Results: The study enrolled 402 patients; of these, 156 (38.8%) were males. The average Hb
levels were 8.7±1.8 and 13.3±2.6 g/dL for the anemic and nonanemic patients, respectively.
One hundred and fifty-five participants were anemic, giving anemia prevalence of 38.56%
(95% CI: 35.17–40.38). The mean difference of the TrueHb ® and Sysmex i3 assays was
2.2219 (SD 1.07915), and the two devices did not show a difference in their measurements
(t=−2.407, p-value 0.017, 95% CI: −0.095–0.010). Further, they showed a significant level of
agreement (t=41.281; 95% CI: 2.1161–2.3277) and intraclass correlation coefficients
(ICC=0.793). The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were
100.00%, 51.01%, 55.16% and 100.00%, respectively. The average performance turnaround
time (TAT) for the TrueHb ® hemometer was 2.46 mins (95% CI: 2.37–2.55).
Conclusion: TrueHb ® POC hemometer is an accurate POC for Hb estimation with a good
performance agreement with the Sysmex i3 analyzer. This, coupled with its utility aspects,
makes it a good diagnostic tool in a high anemia burden and low-resource setting. | en_US |
