Authors : Dasi T, Palika R, Pullakhandam R, Augustine LF, Boiroju NK, Prasannanavar DJ, Pradhan AS, Kurpad AV, Sachdev HS, Kulkarni B.
Publication Year : 2021
Population-based surveys commonly use point-of-care (POC) methods with capillary blood samples for estimating Hb concentrations; these estimates need to be validated by comparison with reference methods using venous blood. In a cross-sectional study in 748 participants (17-86 years, 708 women, Hb: 5·1 to 18·2 g/dl) from Hyderabad, India, we validated Hb measured from a pooled capillary blood sample by a POC autoanalyser (Horiba ABX Micros 60OT, Hb-C-AA) by comparison with venous blood Hb measured by two reference methods: POC autoanalyser (Hb-V-AA) and cyanmethemoglobin method (Hb-V-CM). These comparisons also allowed estimation of blood sample-related and equipment-related differences in the Hb estimates. We also conducted a longitudinal study in 426 participants (17-21 years) to measure differences in the Hb response to iron folate (IFA) treatment by the capillary blood POC method compared with the reference methods. In the cross-sectional study, Bland-Altman analyses showed trivial differences between source of blood (Hb-C-AA and Hb-V-AA; mean difference, limits of agreement: 0·1, -0·8 to 1·0 g/dl) and between analytical methods (Hb-V-AA and Hb-V-CM; mean difference, limits of agreement: < 0>