To compare the diagnostic performance of 10 mathematical formulae for identifying thalassemia trait in blood donors.
Compete blood counts were conducted on peripheral blood specimens using the UniCel DxH 800 hematology analyzer. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to evaluate the diagnostic performance of each mathematical formula.
In the 66 donors with thalassemia and 288 subjects with no thalassemia analyzed, donors with thalassemia trait had lower values for mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular hemoglobin than subjects without thalassemia donors (77 fL vs 86 fL [P < .001]; 25 pg vs 28 pg [P < .001]). The formula developed by Shine and Lal in 1977 showed the highest area under the curve value, namely, 0.9. At the cutoff value of <1812, this formula had maximum specificity of 82.35% and sensitivity of 89.58%.
Our data indicate that the Shine and Lal formula has remarkable diagnostic performance in identifying donors with underlying thalassemia trait.

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