KUMJ | VOL. 23 | NO. 5 | ISSUE 93 | DECEMBER, 2026

Spectrum of Preanalytical Laboratory Errors in Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory in a Tertiary Care Center in Nepal
Niraula A, Das BKL, Sherchand O, Mishra B, Choudhary RM, Tamang S, Lamsal M

Abstract:
Background The laboratory contributes substantially to proper management and quality laboratory reports contribute approximately 70% to medical diagnosis and treatment. Laboratory Science has been considerably facilitated by automation specifically in the field of clinical chemistry. In spite of the major contribution of laboratory automation, errors in the whole laboratory cycle are existent. Objective To evaluate the common pre-analytical errors occurring in routine biochemistry laboratories and subsequently imply strategies applicable in our laboratory setting to minimize their occurrence. Method This is a hospital-based descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in a routine biochemistry laboratory, BPKIHS. All the samples in the routine biochemistry laboratory were screened for a period of 1 year from April 2019 to March 2020 respectively. All the types of preanalytical errors were assessed and recorded. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel and analyzed using SPSS version 11.5. Descriptive statistics were used to depict the frequency of the errors. Result A total of 34,540 samples were screened during the study period. Out of the total samples, 1015 samples were subjected to rejection which accounted for a total of 2.94%. Among the rejected samples, the maximum was due to hemolyzed samples (1.5%), wrong identification (0.6%), samples misplaced (0.4%), improper sample collection (0.2%), inappropriate sample collection time (0.12%), missing samples (0.1%) and lipemic samples (0.02%) respectively. Conclusion The study revealed a significant number of pre-analytical errors existed in our laboratory which has a direct impact on the quality of laboratory results and patient service.
Keyword : Clinical chemistry tests, Clinical laboratory techniques, Diagnostic errors