1 - Scheme Overview

This external quality assessment scheme provides normal and disease-related electrophoretic profiles for assessing monoclonal gammopathy (paraproteinemia) diagnosis and type determination.

The reports include statistical processing of quantitative results and the analysis of qualitative results: interpretation of electrophoresis, immunofixation and immunotyping performed to identify a monoclonal band detected by electrophoresis.

Participating labs can choose to be assessed for all the analytes of this scheme, or simply a subset of analytes of interest.

2 - Assessment Frequency

Number of surveys per year: 8
Number of control samples per survey: 1
Number of samples per year: 8

3 - List of Analytes Assessed 

• Total proteins
• Free Kappa light chains
• Free Lambda light chains
• IgA
• IgG
• IgM
• Protein electrophoresis
  • - Albumin
  • - α₁-Globulins
  • - α₂-Globulins
  • - β₁-Globulins
  • - β₂-Globulins
  • - γ-Globulins
• Monoclonal gammopathy type determination

4 - Description of the Control Samples

Lyophilized (samples to be resuspended in 3 mL of distilled water) or liquid (1 mL ready-to-use) human control serums

5 - Clinical Cases

Clinical cases are provided with each investigation.