Reference Intervals (RIs) in Veterinary Medicine

Reference Intervals (RI’s) in veterinary clinical pathology are necessary to provide a data base in order to compare results obtained from healthy versus diseased animals. Starting from a healthy reference population made up of individuals preliminarily selected on the basis of inclusion or exclusion criteria, data are obtained from laboratory tests which, based on their distribution (Gaussian or non-Gaussian), are processed through statistical tests to then define the RIs. In veterinary medicine it is often difficult 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 could confirm the hypotesis