Preanalytical,Analytical and Postanalytical Errors in Chemical Laboratory

Objective To evaluate and analyse causes and prevention of preanalytical, analytical and postanalytical errors in a clinical chemistry laboratory. Method The present study has been conducted in a pronounced laboratory in India. A retrospective analysis of the results obtained from the clinical laboratory for errors in the preanalytical, analytical and post analytical phase has been carried out on patients from both IPD& OPD from january 2014 to december 2014. Laboratory personnel were asked to register rejections, and causes for rejection of ward as well as out-patient samples collected in the laboratory. Result The study showed that out of 200978 samples processed the most common error seen in laboratories was preanalytical i. e 305, then comes analytical i. e 5 and at the last comes post analytical i. e 4. Preanalytical errors included 156 (51.1 %) cases of hemolysis and 130 (42.6 %) cases of clotted blood. Rest 19 cases were due to less quantity or wrong sampling. Analytical errors were mainly due to equipment malfunction. Post analytical errors were mainly due to typing mistakes. Conclusion Of all the samples received in the lab, the overall percentage of errors came out to be 0.15 %.