he increasing trend toward ambulatory care, home healthcare, nursing home care, and other alternate sites, has created variations in laboratory services and increased probability of medical errors. As an example, in order to increase laboratory volume, laboratory administrators have had to redirect blood collection services to outlying home and clinic settings via contracts with various physici...

Background& Objective: Each laboratory should determine the type of errors and turnaround time (TAT), especially in the preanalytical phase to report quality and timeliness of the test results. The current study aimed at investigating the common causes of preanalytical errors in biochemistry and hematology laboratories and evaluating the preanalytical ...

A total of 52 residual CSF and serum specimens, which were originally negative with the Cryptococcal Antigen Latex Agglutination System (CALAS), were shown to become falsely positive after placement in BBL Port-A-Cul anaerobic transport vials. This transport device, although excellent for specimen transportation for subsequent culture, should not be used if cryptococcal antigen testing is needed.

Dried blood spots collected on Specimen Collection Cards, commonly called “Guthrie cards” (Figure 1), have been used widely as valuable resources for genetic studies, such as, determination of hereditary diseases like phenylketonuria and congenital hypothyroidism. The ease of storage and transportation of these cards with blood spots also lends them to a variety of large field studies, especial...

Phlebotomy, the act of drawing blood through venepuncture, is one of the most common medical procedures in healthcare, as well as being a basis for diagnosis and treatment. A review of the available research has highlighted the dearth of information on the phlebotomy practice in Africa. Several studies elsewhere have shown that the pre-analytical phase (patient preparation, specimen collection ...

An improved version of a pneumatic-tube system built by Amsco, Inc. (Erie, Pa.) and its subsidiary ATC (San Rafael, Calif.) for blood-sample transportation incorporated two innovations: The sample carrier travels at a lower speed than in the previous conventional systems, and itis decelerated gradually on arrival. This tube system was pilot tested for eff iciency by running blood-filled Vacutai...

background: although, nontuberculous mycobacteria can cause disease in different organisms, they usually are not reported in most countries because scientists in general consider them as non-pathogens. but, increasing nontuberculous mycobacteria diseases occurrence has changed this belief. nevertheless, there is no meta-analysis review about prevalence of nontuberculous mycobacteria in iran. me...