What are the "Westgard Rules"? How do you use them?

Everything you ever wanted to know, or possibly didn't want to know, about multirule QC. Multirules are popularly known in the laboratory as "Westgard Rules." Here's the best place to find out more about them.

So we've catalogued some of the worst abuses of "Westgard Rules." What about the best uses? What's the best way to use "Westgard Rules" - and When, Why, How and Who, too? Here is a list of 12 practices to make your use of "Westgard Rules" better.

WARNING! You may not want to read this article. It's a sobering list of all the common mistakes made by manufacturers and laboratories when they design, implement and interpret the "Westgard Rules." As it turns out, when your software or instrument or LIS claims to have "Westgard Rules," it might not be true or even useful. And if you see a claim that they've "modified" the rules to make them better, be afraid.

Think you're the only one who doesn't do QC perfectly? You're not alone. In this article, we look at numerous examples from readers, where the best intentions have gone astray. By seeing how QC practices go wrong in the real world, we can learn what we need to do better.

Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQs) about "Westgard Rules" and multirules.

Plus, some questions about Immunassays and QC (scroll down past the first section).

A discussion of how multirule procedures are implemented in the QC Validator program. These answers also apply to the latest version of our QC Design software, EZ Rules 3.

Also included is a discussion of what a "run" is and how to define it for today's modern random access analyzers. Plus patient averages and moving averages. (Scroll down past the first section)

See the power functions of the different controls rules and combinations of multirules that make up the "Westgard Rule"