Question re 'ranges'

[doluph]

Can you explain why everyone seems to have a different 'range' for each blood test result???

[Treepie]

Different labs have different brands of equipment with different ranges and may even then develop their own ranges from the folk they test .

[doluph in reply to Treepie]

Makes life even more confusing! Thanks for info.

[Clutter]

Doluph, Ranges are determined by a mean average of levels from a local sample. A sample may be as small as 200 results. The top and bottom 2.5% of results will be discarded and a mean average determined from the remaining 95%. I'm not sure that hyper and hypothyroid patients are screened out of the samples.

[ann_g_k]

The question I have, therefore, is: if this is the case, then we really can't compare UK ranges with US or Germany where the upper figure in the range is generally much lower. Yet we seem to be doing this in order to justify/campaign for the alteration of the range in the UK. Or maybe I've been misunderstanding this?