A Reference Program For Clinical Laboratory Test Results

ObjectiveLaboratory tests are important for diagnosis and treatment, but the hard-to-interpret results are always ignored by clinical doctors, and some correct results are not fully utilized. In order to solve this problem, we designed the program.MethodsA critical reason why clinical doctors ignore the hard-to-interpret results is that they do not know how to check whether these results are wrong. So this program provide reference documents to assist them in checking pre-pre-analytical factors and judging whether the results are reliable with laboratory physicians. An important reason why some correct results are not fully utilized is that clinical doctors'time and knowledge are limited. So this program provides the meanings of the test results for reference and could do some necessary calculations for doctors. The program was wrote in C language, its functions were achieved by invoking integer subfunctions, pointers, the C string library functions, loops and selection statements.Results The built executable program consists of a search program and a calculation program. In the search program, doctors could get a specific reference document which contains pre-pre-analytical factors and clinical meanings of a specific test by several selections or entering its name. The calculation program could do some necessary calculations on the basis of laboratory test results to optimize diagnosis and treatment.ConclusionsThis program could help clinical doctors find out laboratory tests'wrong results with the laboratory physicians, and make full use of the reliable results to help patient management. What's more, It would prompt the communication between the laboratory department and clinical departments.