POCT Cardiac

Purpose:
The Programme aims to assess the performance of organisations utilising Point of Care tests (POCT) for biochemical cardiac markers to aid in the assessment of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and cardiac ischaemia. A separate programme is available for High sensitivity cardiac Troponin T and I.

Scope:
The Weqas POCT Cardiac EQA programme is available as EDTA plasma samples. Three liquid human plasma samples are distributed monthly, with a minimum of 36 samples distributed over the year covering a wide clinical range. The samples consist of a panel of linearly related samples produced from heparin plasma donations from healthy volunteers spiked with Cardiac Troponin complex.

The programme includes samples that span the analytical and clinically relevant ranges. The programme accommodates POCT assays, reporting quantitative and qualitative results. They are distributed on a number of occasions over the year, which allows for the assessment of the organisation’s and method’s performance, including linearity, bias, within and between batch imprecision.