Handbook of Nonpathologic Variations in Human Blood Constitu

This book brings together information currently scattered throughout the medical and scientific literature about non-pathological changes in the concentration of blood constituents. The author discusses these variations, which may be statistical, methodological, physiological, age-related, alcohol-related, or due to smoking or drug use. These are important variations and must be taken into account by clinicians when interpreting laboratory results. The handbook offers a quantitative account of variation in the concentration of blood constituents with recommendations for international units of measurement, reference interval determination, and selection of reference subjects. This helpful guide includes more than 1,500 references covering the whole period of development of clinical chemistry, and provides an important historical perspective. Previously unpublished results from the author's laboratory are also included for healthy subjects of different sex and age, as well as the distribution of serum bilirubin obtained from over 3,000 hospital staff members.Gives quantitative information concerning changes with age, sex, physiological variation, pregnancy, menopause, smoking, alcohol, and other drugs for substances frequently assayed in clinical chemistry laboratoriesConsiders the effect of pre-analytical error concerned with the collection of specimens and errors associated with different methods of analysis and analytical interferenceCollects all factors that affect the interpretation of results from a wide range of literature and presents them in one comprehensive handbookOffers an important historical perspective with the inclusion of more than 1,500 references covering the whole period of development of clinical chemistry