Review demonstrates reference intervals guide diagnostic decisions in veterinary species, highlighting the need for clinical findings to validate laboratory hypotheses.
Reference Intervals (RIs) are necessary in veterinary clinical pathology to provide a data base in order to compare results obtained from healthy versus diseased animals. Data are obtained from laboratory tests and, depending on whether they have a Gaussian or non-Gaussian distribution, are processed through statistical tests to define the RIs. This process begins with a healthy reference population made up of individuals who have been initially chosen based on inclusion or exclusion criteria. It is frequently challenging to have a large number of healthy individuals on which to establish de novo RIs, especially in wild and exotic animals. However, the use of reference intervals in daily clinical practice remains a fundamental instrument for therapeutic and diagnostic decisions, but it must always be accompanied by clinical findings that can confirm the hypothesis.
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Quagliardi et al. (2024) studied this question.
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