Clinician's responsibility in pre-analytical quality assurance of histopathology

ABSTRACT

To ascertain the adequacy of information provided by clinicians when requesting a histopathology investigation and to study the quality control parameters of the specimen containers. This is an observational descriptive study which was carried out at Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in December 2006 on 500 specimen requests for histopathology. Out of 500 specimens, age was not mentioned in 29 [5.8%] cases. No clinical history or differential diagnosis was given in 170 [34%] cases. Site of biopsy was absent in 65 [13%] cases and the name of requesting clinician or any contact information was present in only 115 [23%] of request forms. One hundred forty three [28.7%] containers were inadequate relative to the size of the specimen. Adequate volume of fixative was absent in 176 [38.2%] samples. There were 22 [4.3%] samples which did not have any sort of label mentioning either patient's name or type of specimen. Injection bottles constituted the highest number of containers [n=204; 40.8%] used to submit the histopathology specimen. Clinicians of all grades and specialties must be educated and made aware of their primary responsibility to request the service appropriately for the benefit of the patient and patient care