1 - Scheme Overview

This external quality assessment allows the control of immunoassays with hormone markers and tumor or metabolic markers. This scheme brings together 63 analytes distributed over 12 sub-schemes.

The most commonly assayed analytes are offered in the CIMD scheme. The more specialized analytes are offered in the CIMB, CIME, CIMF, CIMG, CIMH, CIMK, CIMM, CIMN, CIMR, CIMT and CIMV programs (see Table below).

The determination of the acceptable limits is based on the use of biological variations.

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: 6
Number of control samples per survey: 2
Number of samples per year: 12 (except for the CIMG, CIMK and CIMM scheme: 9 samples)

3 - List of Analytes Assessed 

For EPO, S100B Protein and DHT (dihydrotestosterone) : 4 surveys per year.

4 - Description of the Control Samples

Lyophilized human control serum (with the exception of CIMG samples for Glucagon) . The samples are to be resuspended in :

• 3 mL of distilled water for the CIMD and CIME sub-schemes
• 1 mL of distilled water for CIMB, CIMF, CIMH, CIMK, CIMM, CIMN, CIMR, CIMT and CIMV sub-schemes
• 0.5 distilled water for the CIMG sub-scheme

For the CIMD sub-scheme, we advise laboratories testing more than 18 analytes to order an additional kit.