Aim: Panic value refers to a laboratory test result that is life-threatening and requires immediate corrective action by the physician. Although there is no recommendation to re-run the panic-valued test, some laboratory specialists report the result after repeating the test. However, this procedure leads to a certain loss of time and delays the treatment. In this study, it was aimed to determine whether the difference between the results of repeated panic values was significant and the delay due to repeat testing.

Material and Methods: In our laboratory, 1326 panic values repeated for amylase, glucose, calcium, creatinine, potassium, and sodium during 6 months were analyzed retrospectively. A 95% confidence interval was calculated according to the formula: "Bias% + Z x standard error of the mean" for each panic value. The results were compared with the total allowable error of the tests.

Results: Only the 95% confidence interval value of sodium was found to be above the total allowable error limits. The mean elapsed time between test repetitions was the minimum for sodium (34 minutes) and the maximum for creatinine (67 minutes).

Conclusion: As our findings showed that rerunning tests gave similar results and delayed notifying the physician about the panic value, we conclude that repeating critical values is unnecessary. It also causes waste of reagents and loss of labor, increasing laboratory costs.