Laboratory networking and sample quality: A still relevant issue for patient safety

摘要

Regardless of remarkable advances in technology and computer science which has occurred over the past decades, several lines of evidence still attest that the activities of the preanalytical phase are highly vulnerable, and may strongly contribute to the decrease of the global quality of the diagnostic sample (1, 2). Typically, the most susceptible steps throughout the total testing process are those directly related to collection and handling of almost every type of biological specimen, thus including those referred for serum (3), plasma (4, 5), urine (6, 7), arterial blood gas (8), as well as decentralized testing (9).