Errors in Laboratory Medicine

The problem of medical errors has recently received a great deal of attention, which will probably increase. In this minireview, we focus on this issue in the fields of laboratory medicine and blood transfusion.

We conducted several MEDLINE queries and searched the literature by hand. Searches were limited to the last 8 years to identify results that were not biased by obsolete technology. In addition, data on the frequency and type of preanalytical errors in our institution were collected.