Comparison of Chemcard cholesterol test and laboratory cholesterol measurements.
BACKGROUND: The Chemcard cholesterol test has been designed to estimate cholesterol levels in patients in General Practitioners' surgeries. The patients displaying elevated cholesterol levels may then be referred for a more accurate test at a recognised laboratory. AIMS: To compare the accuracy of the Chemcard cholesterol procedure with a standardised laboratory procedure for estimating cholesterol levels. METHODS: The Chemcard cholesterol procedure was applied to 200 subjects from the community, who were enrolled in a cardiovascular risk assessment programme. RESULTS: The correlation coefficient between the paired measurements was 0.83. The Chemcard cholesterol procedure gave slightly higher results than did the laboratory procedure as shown by the mean (+/-standard deviation) difference between the two methods of 0.16 +/- 0.58 mmol/L. CONCLUSIONS: The poor agreement between the two methods and the potential misclassification by Chemcard suggests that the Chemcard is not a reliable test system. The high level of risk group misclassification found in this study refutes the manufacturer's claims and does not eliminate the need for formal laboratory cholesterol measurement.