Laboratory services are the backbone of the modern health care sector. Effective laboratory service is the amalgamation of precision, accuracy, and speed of reports delivered to the patient. In spite of rapid advances in laboratory science, it is still susceptible to various manual and systemic errors. Various types of errors that we, as clinical biochemists, encounter in the laboratory are classified as preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical, depending upon the time of presentation. The preanalytical phase is an important component of laboratory medicine [1]. It includes specimen collection, handling and processing variables, physiological variables, and endogenous variables. Some of the preanalytical variables such as specimen variables can be controlled, while knowledge of uncontrollable variables need to be well understood in order to be able to separate their effects from disease related changes affecting laboratory results.
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