Evaluation of Pre-analytical Biopsy Specimen Errors in the Pathology Laboratory of Hamadan School of Dentistry (2009-2010)

Statement of problem: oral biopsy is important in the definite diagnosis of oral and maxillofacial lesions. this procedure as well as other laboratory services is prone to errors affecting the patients' safety. purpose: the purpose of this study was to evaluate pre-analytical biopsy specimen errors in the oral pathology laboratory of hamedan school of dentistry, west of iran. materials and method: ninety-one oral biopsy samples, obtained from departments of oral and maxillofacial surgery (34 samples, 37.3%), oral medicine (22 samples, 24.3%) and periodontics (10 samples, 10.9%), as well as private offices (16 samples, 17.6%) and hospitals (9 samples, 9.9%) were received and evaluated in the oral pathology laboratory of hamedan school of dentistry considering pre-analytical errors. results: the errors in the request forms included unmentioned names of patients (7.7%), age (3.3%), clinical history (4.4%), site of biopsy (10.9%), differential diagnos- is (18.7%) and the name of the requesting clinician (8.8%), as well as lack of radiographs (4.4%) and previous biopsy results (2.2%). use of inappropriate fixative (5%), and specimen-containers with non-proportional volume (3%), and their small size inlets (3%) was also reported. non-standard containers were seen in 19% of the cases, and mislabeling errors (31 missed, 2incomplete defects, and 1 incorrect) in 34% of the cases. of 105 specimens, 6.67% were small in size, 1.90% superficially removed, and 0.95% had been traumatized. out of the 5 containers with more than one specimen, 4 containers did not have any markers. conclusion: considering the biopsy errors in the study specimens, training and surveillance to reduce the frequency of such errors seems necessary.