Raccomandazioni per l'identificazione e la gestione dei valori critici nei laboratori clinici

Critical values (also known as panic or alarm values) highlight a laboratory test result associated with a serious risk for the patient's health, requiring immediate communication to the physician to establish appropriate and punctual therapeutic interventions. Although critical values are universally recognized as essential standards for the good laboratory practice, their implementation and management still represent matter of debate worldwide. Since the implementation of standardized and universally accepted procedures appears as yet an essential policy to provide rational and efficient solutions to this issue, the present document is aimed to provide consensus recommendations for detection and management of critical values in clinical laboratories. The document is issued by the Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology (SIBioC), the Italian Society of Laboratory Medicine (SIMeL), with the Italian Committee for Standardization of Laboratory and Haematological Methods (CISMEL), through the Intersocietary Study Group (GdS) on "Standardization of extra-analytical variability of laboratory results".