Impact of preanalytics on clinical laboratory test results

Abstract

The clinical laboratory plays a key role in the diagnosis and follow-up of the patient. In recent years, awareness of the importance of patient safety and the need to reduce medical errors has increased.

Traditionally, the lab’s efforts have focused on the analytical phase, making it possible to reduce errors. At present, therefore, efforts must be directed towards extra-analytical phases, in which the incidence of errors is much greater, especially in the preanalytical phase.

One of the current challenges of the clinical laboratory is to improve preanalytical processes, because quality can only be ensured if we take into account the entire laboratory process. To this end, it is necessary to standardize the processes and to understand and control the way in which all professionals obtain and manipulate samples.