A comparison of statistical methods for age-related reference intervals

Age-specific reference intervals are commonly used in the routine monitoring of individuals, where interest lies in the detection of extreme values, possibly indicating abnormality. Here, a review is given of the wide range of statistical techniques which have been proposed far the construction of these intervals and issues such as the estimation of confidence bands and goodness of fit are discussed. Three methods, thought to be the most widely applied approaches, are considered in more detail. Comparisons are made on the basis of reference interval estimation for three real data sets.