Guidelines for the prescription of standard hematology and biochemistry clinical laboratory tests in the intensive care unit: A scoping review protocol

• Published in: PloS one 2024-10, Vol.19 (10), p.e0310059
• Main Authors: Devis, Luigi L, Catry, Emilie, Hardy, Michael, Mansour, Alexandre, Honore, Patrick M, Lippi, Giuseppe, Closset, Mélanie, Mullier, François
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biochemistry; Clinical Laboratory Techniques - standards; Cost control; Diagnosis, Laboratory; Documents; Environmental impact; Environmental management; Geographical distribution; Geographical locations; Grey literature; Guidelines; Hematologic Tests - methods; Hematologic Tests - standards; Hematology; Hematology - standards; Hospitals; Humans; Intensive care; Intensive Care Units; International organizations; Laboratories; Laboratories, Clinical; Laboratory tests; Life Sciences; Medical research; Medicine; Medicine, Experimental; Patients; Practice guidelines (Medicine); Practice Guidelines as Topic; Quality management; Review Literature as Topic; Santé publique et épidémiologie; Search engines; Search methods
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310059

This scoping review protocol describes the strategy for a scoping review that aims to provide a comprehensive overview of published guidelines for the prescription of standard laboratory tests performed in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. The use of clinical laboratories is constantly increasing. However, there is evidence of inappropriate use. Inappropriate laboratory testing has the potential to harm patients, increase costs, burden staff, and has an environmental impact. Effective management can be achieved through demand managing strategies, such as providing guidelines on performing the appropriate test, for the right patient, at the right time. Although national and international guidelines exist for individual tests, a comprehensive summary of available recommendations for laboratory testing in the ICU is currently unavailable. This scoping review will incorporate documents that provide explicit advice on which test to perform in ICU patients. We selected 34 tests routinely ordered in the ICU. This review will consider any document type that matches our concept and context. We will consider gray literature with appropriate adherence to guidelines methodology. We will not limit the review by geographical location, but will only include articles published in English. Our scoping review will follow the Joanna Brigg Institute (JBI) methodology. We will search Medline (PubMed), Embase, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Google. Our search strategy adheres to the JBI 3-step construction approach for systematic reviews. We will search for keywords related to guidelines, laboratory testing, and the 34 selected tests. We will report our study using the S1 Checklist. Review registration number: osf.io/yfs9z.